P1, 2 and 3 Nativity
The 2019 Kippen Primary Nativity was called ‘Everyone Loves a Baby!’ Pupils had lots of fun performing this upbeat Christmas Nativity and enjoyed learning the lyrics, lines and dance moves. They told the story of six children who live with their parents, two kind innkeepers who have just had a new baby. The children were also involved in designing programmes, posters and tickets for the performance. We are very proud of all the pupils who worked hard for many weeks before it. Thank you to all who attended. We hope you enjoyed it!
I liked all the costumes, especially the camel costume. (Jamie)
The nativity was really good, and we all tried to sing nicely. (Emma)
I really liked the innkeeper song. (Campbell)
I was a bit nervous first but then I felt just fine. I liked being on the stage and doing all the actions. (Isla)
Primary 2/3 investigate owl pellets
As part of our work based on the story, ‘Owl Babies’, Primary2/3 dissected and investigated owl pellets.
We got to use magnifying glasses and microscopes to find out just what the owls had been eating. Using our identification chart, we think we spotted the jaw of a vole, some mouse bones and lots of other bits of fur and feathers. These were hungry owls!
“I enjoyed digging into the pellets and finding out what different things were in it.” – Harry
“It was great using the magnifying glasses. It made it easy to see all the little bones.” – Cara
Primary 3/4
P3/4 had a new class member this term – The Butterfly Lion! After reading the story, the children wrote to the lion keepers at the Safari Park to ask how to look after lions. As soon as the lion cub arrived, the children wrote instructions to explain how to take care of him. Having such an important, and cuddly, member of the class inspired the children to write poems, stories, posters and dances. They wrote news reports and carefully considered their own opinions about aspects of the story. Finally, they made models of the lion in clay to celebrate the end of an exciting term!
In P5/6, our topic this term has been the Titanic.
We have been learning all about what life was like in 1912, how the Titanic was made, what happened on the journey, how the Titanic sank and what happened after the sinking.
We have investigated these questions through a number of activities such as building circuits to practice Morse code, creating timelines of the journey, re-enacting the journey through drama and even writing our own survivor diary entries. We have even had Titanic memorabilia sent to us from the Belfast Museum to help us understand how some passengers may have dressed.
Our favourite part of our topic was being able to build a 3D replica of the Titanic by designing our own shoe boxes to represent parts of the Titanic.
P6/7 Topic: The Global Village
We have been learning about our world through our topic ‘The Global Village’.
Through our topic, we explored numeracy, including fractions, percentages and graphs. We found out a lot of interesting things about the world we live in, and the similarities and differences between different countries.
“I liked doing all of the bar graphs. We all got a different topic such as religion, age, language etc. Mine was religion and I found out that there were many more religions in the world than I had thought.” Lomond
“I really liked doing my line graph because I had never done a graph where you could compare something over time and see the patterns as easily. Some of the results were quite shocking. There are a lot of chickens in the world!” Ailie
We even used our lines graphs, which showed sunset and sunrise over the year in Kippen, to create an art project which showed our changing seasons and how the world outside changes across the year.
We also used science to help us to explore challenges in some countries, such as finding fresh water.
“We had very dirty water and we all had to get into groups to make the water clean by making filters from different materials. The materials which worked best were the cotton wool and paper towels. I think that this was because they didn’t have any big gaps in them, so they caught all the dirty bits in the water.” – Emily
Through art we explored diversity by creating our own versions of the ‘Diversity Hands’ painting.
“We had to look at our hands and try to copy them in pencil. After that we created a good copy and added detail, then coloured them in using lots of different colours of pencil. I think that the message of this was that you are the same no matter what colour you are.”
Last October Rainbows has started in Kippen. For those who are not aware of what Rainbows is, it is part of the Girlguiding organisation and is for girls age 5 to 7. The meetings are held in the Village Hall on Wednesdays, during school term time, from 4.30pm until 5.30pm
On Saturday the 14th of December ‘Classics @ Kippen’ put on a ‘Christmas Celebration’ in Kippen Parish Church. After weeks of election mania and with the Christmas stress fast approaching it was so good for us all to take a bit of time out and have a change of focus! Such is our following that we now have a committed audience who come from all around and, despite foul weather and the lure of a cosy night in watching the final of ‘Strictly’ on TV, we were absolutely delighted to welcome over 200 people to this event. According to all reports, the audience was not disappointed and was well rewarded with a beautiful programme of Christmas words, music and carols presented by 5 singers, 2 readers, 2 brass players, a pianist and an organist all from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The church was beautifully decorated for Christmas, the stage was set and, for the first time, we were able to use our new theatre lights (which we bought with the proceeds of our last concert) which made a huge difference to the ambience and overall performance. The atmosphere was wonderful, and I think it’s safe to say there was something in the programme for everyone. The concert opened with classics from Handel’s Messiah and musically journeyed through some seasonal art song, favourite Christmas songs and audience carols finishing with the usual ‘cheesy’ Hollywood numbers which everyone loved. The readings brought an added dimension and were both thought provoking and funny ranging from Dickens and Pam Ayers to some very moving ‘Letters to Santa’ and culminating in the poignant ‘In Memoriam’ by Tennyson, which is surely in itself a message for our time. (Do look it up if you don’t know it). The audience had a great time but so did the students. They always love coming to Kippen. Not only are they fed incredibly well, (students will do most things for good food!) and spoiled rotten over the weekend, they also love having the opportunity to perform and a C@K concert is fast becoming a sought after and very desirable ‘gig’! We were also thrilled that the school really enjoyed using the staging after the concert for their end of term concert and church service and are delighted that the lighting and staging is a community asset for everyone.
The Wee Vine 