The Wee Vine

We look forward to welcoming our new P1 pupils on 22^nd August. We have had many opportunities to meet them and they enjoyed 2 afternoons during the transition visit in June.

We will have 5 classes next year. There is always the chance that pupils can leave or arrive during the summer holidays, so classes issued before the summer are always provisional and may be subject to change.

P1/2 Mrs Mier

P2/3/4 Miss Campbell

P4/5 Miss Alexander

P5/6 Mrs Stirling

P7 Mrs Stone

We welcome Miss Campbell back to Kippen in her new role as Principal Teacher. We also welcome Miss Hebden who will work with us for 2.5 days a week in all classes and Mrs Seaton who will be in the school office every morning.

We said a sad farewell to Miss McGillivray and Mrs Newall from P4/5, Mrs Leask from the office, Mrs Hewitt who finished her Acting Head role, Mrs More(Music), Miss McKie (PE) and Mrs Street who has been a Principal Teacher at Kippen Primary for the past 12 years. Mrs Street had a song specially written for her leaving assembly. The pupils sang it so well and it was very catchy. Good luck for the future to all the staff that we said goodbye to.

We also said goodbye to our fantastic P7s and their families. For some families it was the last of their children to leave Kippen Primary and the end of many years of partnership working. Thank you again to all the families who have given so much support to the school. We appreciate it greatly.

Congratulations to our citizenship award winners this year. Holly Fielden was awarded the Junior Citizenship Shield and Chloe Watt was awarded the shield for Citizenship in the Senior School. Thank you to Mr and Mrs Marshall from coming to award these shields in memory of their son Ross. Well done to Holly and Chloe for being such good role models and demonstrating our school values with a kind and caring manner.

The Sports Achievement award, which is voted for by pupils, was awarded to Thomas Reilly who has once again had success in sport this year, including football, long jump, sprint relay, cross country and lacrosse. Well done Thomas!

Primary 1/2 started their year with a writing project entitled ‘Fairyland’. This involved rewriting a few traditional tales and creating artwork for their own books.We started by looking closely at the bean plants in the grounds so that we could get the detail correct. The next project was ‘Little Star’ the school Nativity play and the children enjoyed playing various roles in this first performance.

We then moved on to ‘Farm to Fork ‘ to learn more about where our food comes from and the pupils were delighted with their trip to Tesco. They went behind the scenes to see how the bread rolls were made and also had a chat with the fishmonger to see where the fish came from.

Our final topic was ’MInibeasts’ and the children were fascinated by the facts about insects and other minibeasts. The children created some great minibeast habitats using an old shoebox and creating minibeasts from clay. For our school trip, we went to David Marshall Lodge and saw lots of midge flies as we went on our minibeast hunt!

Primary 1/2 started their year with a writing project entitled ‘Fairyland’. This involved rewriting a few traditional tales and creating artwork for their own books.We started by looking closely at the bean plants in the grounds so that we could get the detail correct. The next project was ‘Little Star’ the school Nativity play and the children enjoyed playing various roles in this first performance.

We then moved on to ‘Farm to Fork ‘ to learn more about where our food comes from and the pupils were delighted with their trip to Tesco. They went behind the scenes to see how the bread rolls were made and also had a chat with the fishmonger to see where the fish came from.

Our final topic was ’MInibeasts’ and the children were fascinated by the facts about insects and other minibeasts. The children created some great minibeast habitats using an old shoebox and creating minibeasts from clay. For our school trip, we went to David Marshall Lodge and saw lots of midge flies as we went on our minibeast hunt!

In June Primary 3 visited Dynamic Earth. We had a great trip where the children experienced a ‘time machine’ to witness the big bang and feel the ground shudder as a volcano erupted. They touched an iceberg and got caught in torrential rain in the rainforest. We finished our trip with a visit to the ShowDome where we learned about Super Volcanoes. A wonderful time was had by all!

This year Primary 4/5 have had lots of fun learning about interesting topics such as China, Natural Disasters and Dinosaurs. We have enjoyed learning new facts about these topics. We performed a dragon dance at the Open Afternoon in October and we taught our audience a few facts about dragons. We loved having lots of visitors into the classroom at the Open Afternoon in March. In May it was time for the school show where we performed in the Village Hall. We have been busy! It’s been a great year with Miss McGillivray and Mrs Newall.

Primary 4/5 have loved all the sporting opportunities we have had this year. One of our highlights has been performing at the Macrobert Theatre alongside Active Stirling’s ‘Think Dance.’ It is something we will always remember. It was a fabulous opportunity to perform in a large theatre with a huge audience. We spent a lot of time practising to make sure that our performance was well rehearsed before we got onto the big stage.

This year in primary 5/6 we have explored Ancient Egypt, travelled through Light and Sound and immersed ourselves in the magical world of Harry Potter. We have been fortunate to welcome several people into our classroom who have helped us with our learning journey this year, especially Jamie from Balfron High School. Jamie came to Kippen most weeks to help us with our French, we had a lot of fun playing games and creating French monsters! We also really enjoyed learning about things in our world in a scientific way this year. We have learned about how our eyes and ears work, how plants grow, about carrying our experiments and investigations and the difference between reversible and irreversible reactions.

We have been fascinated by watching caterpillars change into butterflies and amazed by tadpoles transforming into frogs. We went to Edinburgh Zoo to learn more about other animals from around the world. We wrote a song about dragons… or rather about not judging people based on appearances! We went to Balfron High School for swimming lessons and left feeling more confident and skilled in the water than when we arrived. They showed us how to keep ourselves safe in the water and we have all practised these skills a lot now. We also worked hard with other classes within the school to put on performances of the Pied Piper that we were proud of and all through this we continued to work hard across all curricular areas too.

We supported each other, taught each other and learned from each other. We have had a fun and interesting year and are looking forward to our next year at Kippen Primary.

Well, what a year Primary 6/7 has had! We started our year with our fabulous dragon creations, both drawn and sculpted. We have a class full of entertainers and this was proven when some of our class performed their evocative and somewhat terrifying poetry at our Dragon Day open afternoon which impressed their audience. We then moved onto learning all about Robert Burns and the Primary Sevens prepared their Burns’ Supper. It was an amazing afternoon as they dazzled their audience with Burns Poetry and beautiful music and singing.

A special mention must go to Maddie Anderson and Holly Kenn who performed a spine-tingling rendition of Tam O’ Shanter to our audience of family and friends. We then embarked upon our Rainforest topic, learning all about the amazing animals that reside there. We had fun during our heated Rainforest debate, looking at the very serious issue of deforestation and the effect it is having on our planet. The class took on their roles with enthusiasm and presented during the debate in a confident and persuasive manner. Our final topic was all about how to keep ourselves fit and healthy.

The children had to create a presentation to illustrate the benefits of exercise and healthy eating for their fictional client, the porridge loving Bobby Baird! They did a wonderful job at researching their plans for Bobby, full of good advice about why we should always try to make those healthy choices and be ‘Fit for Life’. Our year culminated in the transition of our Primary Sevens to Balfron High and their highly emotional and poignant Leavers’ Ceremony. The P7s worked incredibly hard to put together a performance of the highest quality, scripting and filming segments for their Gogglebox themed show, as well as putting together a script that brought it all together beautifully. All in all Primary 6/7 have been busy throughout the year, but they have worked hard and have made the most of all the experiences offered to them. I wonder what adventures next year will bring? Watch this space!

The Primary 6/7 Class recently visited David Marshall Lodge accompanied by the Primary 1/2 class on a rather rainy day to hunt minibeasts and go stream dipping. Despite the weather, everyone threw themselves into their activities and found themselves enchanted by the beautiful scenery they travelled through. Down at the stream, P6/7 used their insect guide sheet, nets and magnifiers to inspect and identify what they had caught. The children were amazed at the variety of creatures that they discovered. Our trip was great fun and despite the rain and wading in streams, we all managed to stay relatively dry! A miracle! A wonderful trip and a great way for the Primary Sevens to say a fond farewell to their P1 buddies.

Kippen Primary received a ‘Food for Thought’ grant to buy kitchen equipment to allow us to cook some of the food we are growing. All classes have taken part in food education this year. We produced a Kippen Community Cookbook which is for sale at a cost of £5 (available from Rhubarb Lime over the Summer). Several workshops were organised over the year to engage the children including a RHET talk about eggs, soup making with some of our grandparents and food label designs. We also supported the annual Skinner’s sausage filling invention competition and also visited Tesco with the P1-3s. We will be developing our food education in future years through the curriculum planning process. The food industry is important in this area and may well provide employment opportunities for our pupils so we are keen to develop our young workforce even at an early age! The Stirling Observer captured a moment at the Street Fayre of Ailsa and Beth on our stand.