Kirkcolm Primary School

Mr & Mrs Morrison popped into school yesterday with beautiful baby James, to visit the boys and girls. After lots of cuddles from the staff at lunch time, the pupils gathered at assembly to meet their new addition – there were lots of “Awwws” and “He’s so cute!” which he most definitely was!  Mr & Mrs Morrison were asked questions about looking after a baby, before heading home for James’ nap! It was lovely seeing them – we’re looking forward to their next visit and seeing how much baby James has grown!

Our newly appointed Eco Committee met for the first time today.

• P7 – Steven
• P6 – Ivan
• P5 – Ruby
• P4 – Cameron & Callum
• P3 – Ross
• P2 – Ewan
• P1 – Parker

After a successful interview process, our new members were happy to join us for our first meeting to agree our targets for our next Eco Flag application.  After carrying out an environmental review (environmental-review-general-KK) The group agreed that the targets we will focus on for the next two year action plan will be:

• Litter and Waste
• Global Citizenship
• Climate Action

The members were keen to get cracking and have already organised today’s litter survey in our school grounds, to be shortly followed by a litter pick as soon as possible.

Our Eco Committee members have already shown great enthusiasm and a willingness to take on responsibility.  They will visit both classes to chat about what has been agreed and discuss how everyone will have a role to play in helping us achieve our eco-friendly goals.

UNCRC Rights of the Child:

Article 12 – Respect for Children’s Views

Article 15 – Setting up or joining groups

Article 24 – Health, Water, Food & Environment

Our fabulous gardening club has kicked off with gusto for this year  with lots of ‘doing good to be green’!

Mrs Richardson is blogging the children’s activities on our Kirkcolm Primary School Parents Facebook group.  It’s great to read her updates on our pupil’s great efforts:

30/08/23 – We had a great turnout tonight of budding gardeners. We dug the potatoes up we planted earlier this year. We found some great bugs too!! Check out the chafer grub, a soil dwelling larve, common in lawns apparently. 

03/09/23 – Thank you to Mrs Richardson, Theolette Manson and Jennifer Service for coming along to help tidy up our garden area on Monday.  They made a great job of clearing and making way for new planting.

06/09/23 – We created a huge amount of waste from todays tidy up and it is a huge effort to cart it all to Stranraer tip. Instead we have created our own long term compost heap/bug haven in the woodland next to the orchard. This will help manage our own garden and teach the children about composting/recycling

We did a bit of everything at gardening club tonight and I set them homework! We hope to plant cabbages next week and slugs will be our enemy so I have asked the children to collect uncooked dried uncooked eggshells, used coffee granules and old hair from hairbrushes or hair from brushing a dog! (eek). I have asked them to bring anything collected next Wednesday (13^th Sept). I am determined to teach how to garden without chemicals! 

Keep up the great work everyone!

UNCRC Rights of the Child

• Article 15 – Setting up and joining clubs
• Article 25 – Health, water, food & environment

We’re all back to school looking that little bit taller, with our fresh hair cuts and new school clothes – teachers included! Staff were happy to welcome back old, familiar faces and some new P1 faces – Orla, Parker and Harlow, who we are sure will make fabulous additions to our Kirkcolm team 🙂

Today we spent the day getting back into routine and settling back in – by the end of the week we hope to be back into the swing of things, ploughing on with some learning 🙂

Here are some cute pics for you to enjoy!

Thanks very much to Sheila McGrory for all her hard work in making a little photobooth session come together so we could grab some memories before P7 leave us! As well as just having a bit of fun!

Big thanks to Debbie Smith for making the gowns and hats!

Thank you to Heather from the Nursery for allowing us use of the balloon arch! 

Finally – thank you to the amazing pupils and their excellent photogenic skills! 

Pupils also got to enjoy an ice cream treat after lunch courtesy of the parent council. 🙂

Wow – what an emotional day for the pupils and parents at Kirkcolm with the Leaving ceremony taking place this afternoon.

Such a great opportunity to gather pupils, parents and staff alike to celebrate the hard work of the year – this year especially this year as it has been one of true success for this little school with its glowing HMIE Report.

We are all very proud of our team and we have found a way to celebrate all the pupils wide range of achievements across the year! 

Well done to those of us who exemplified good health with Excellent Attendance; 

• Archie Ashton
• Cameron & Ewan Clarke 
• Calum & Danny Dougan 
• Steven Gillon
• Olivia Johnstone 
• Noah McGrory 
• Marley & Blaze Redmond 
• Ivan & James Turtle
• Henry Wilson 

Our accelerated readers in each year group which smashed their goals! 

P2 – Rory Calvert – 120 books this year !

P3 – Emilie Brown

P4 – Sophie Mc Colm

P5 – Archie Ashton

P6 – Alfie Caldwell ( Points ) Sally Drummond ( Books)

P7 – Noah Mc Grory 

The Responsible Citizens!

P1 – Henry Wilson 

P2 – Freddie Adams 

P3 – Callum Dougan 

P4 – Marley Redmond 

P5 – Hayden Davidson 

P6 – Danny Dougan 

P7 – Olivia Johnstone 

The Mini Walk Certificates and Shields to the winners and runner-ups for our Mini Walk fundraiser earlier in the year! 

The Sports Champions from Sports Day! 

P1 – James Johnstone

P2 – Freddie Adams 

P3 – Paige Neill 

P4 – Lyle McCulloch & Ruby McMillan 

P5 – Ivan Turtle 

P6 – Danny Dougan 

P7 – Noah McGrory 

Overall Sports Champions

Boys – Ivan Turtle 

Girls – Phoebe Manson 

The Most Merits in P1-4 – Rory Calvert 

The Most Merits in P5-7 – Ivan Turtle 

Special Qualities

Ian – Polite and well mannered 

Kaylyn – Most helpful pupil in the class 

Harrison – Developing great confidence over the year 

Alistair – Displaying an excellent kind and caring nature 

Our Gold Star Award Winners were… 

• Archie Ashton 
• Paige Neill
• Ross Warwick 
• Rory Calvert
• Rebecca Manson 
• Phoebe Manson 
• Callum Dougan 
• Joey Neill
• Sally Warwick 

Platinum Rainbow Tables Winners this year were… 

• Phoebe Manson
• Lydia Adams
• Alfie Caldwell
• Steven Gillon 
• Olivia Johnstone 
• Noah McGrory 

Platinum Rainbow Spelling Winner is… 

• Phoebe Manson 

Mrs MacPherson’s Award for excellent effort and progress working with her was awarded to Marley Redmond for his progress and hard work over the year! 

The Academic Awards

Literacy:

P1-4 – Sally Warwick

P4-7 – Havana Diyani 

Numeracy: 

P1-4 – Gregor McColm 

P4-7 – Blaze Redmond 

Health and Wellbeing:

P1-4 – Jessica Johnstone 

P4-7 – Steven Gillon 

REACH Award:

P1-4 – Rebecca Manson 

P4-7 – Alfie Caldwell 

This year we also had the addition of a new award to the school which was kindly donated by a member of the Kirkcolm Community in honour of his late wife for conservation work in the community called ‘The Sandra Heron Salver for Conservation Champion’ and this went to James Turtle with honorary medals in this field awarded to Henry Wilson, Marley Redmond & Jack Howie. 

Finally we bid goodbye to our P7’s AND Havana this year as they move onto pastures new after the end of summer. We left Havana with a card from us all and the P7’s with their classic Photostory and leaver hoodies in an effort to elicit tears from parents and pupils alike and give them something to remember us by-      Kirkcolm P7 Leavers 2023 – YouTube

We hope those who came enjoyed this years ceremony and seeing how bright this team can shine! For those that were not able to attend, here are some photos of the pupils with their achievements… 

At our most recent Pupil Council meeting, it was highlighted that we don’t have many non-fiction books in the school library. So our responsible pupils wrote to the Community Reuse Shop to enquire about donations of books. They very kindly invited us to pop into the shop to look through the books and pick a selection for our school.

Olivia from Kirkcolm, Alexander from Leswalt and Jack from Portpatrick all went on Wednesday morning to browse the huge range of books available. After an hour of hunting (some were hunting more than others – there were times where pupils were lounging on the floor engrossed in a book they found!!), they each left with a bag of books for their school.

Thank-you to the Community Reuse Shop for your generosity. We are looking forward to getting our new books into our school library for pupils to enjoy.

As you know, this year we decided to do our school trip closer to home than we usually go.. Why not make the most of the area we live in and what it has to offer! 

So, we hopped on a bus on a glorious Thursday with the sun splitting the sky! (after many days/weeks of worrying about what exactly then weather was going to do…) We arrived at Sands of Luce, Sandhead to start our alpaca trekking with Golden Sands Trekking Centre where pupils got up close and personal feeding some goats, sheep and horses and taking the Alpacas a little jaunt around a pen! 

After this, we headed down to the playpark at Sandhead front to get our hands washed and get ready for our Picnic. A big thanks to Alison for bringing out her ice cream van so we could cool off in the sun with a cone! When the wee ones arrived on the bus – we busted out a picnic for the kings and set to work demolishing the goodies. We had pizzas, sausage rolls, wraps, brownies, sweets and chocolates to get stuck into as well as other bits!

After this, the swimming costumes came out and we headed straight down to the beach and there was no stopping them as they all ploughed straight into the water! What a great time was had, pupils were splashing about with their goggles on, zooming about of bougie boards and just enjoying the sunshine and the sea. 

We had a few minor incidents as the tide caught up with some of our bags (oops!) and a certain someone’s crutches (!!!) were left on an island that disappeared rapidly… But this just added to the smiles of the day! 

Finally we got towelled off and boarded back onto our bus, sandy and happy and ready for home. 

Here are some photos of the day… 10/10 – would do again! 

‘Best trip yet!’ – a direct quote from some pupils on the day!