On Thursday 23 January Port Ellen Primary School celebrated Burns Day by opening its doors to the community for a traditional Burns Ceilidh. We had poetry recitals from all of the children, performances from Ella Edgar’s Highland Dancers, music from Mirren Brown and Niall Kirkpatrick and a quiz written by the P6/7 class. The event was very well attended and enjoyed by lots of family and friends of the school as well as others from the Port Ellen Community.
All of the children were to learn a Scottish poem by heart for the occasion. The P1/2 class had two wonderful recitals on a food theme which made the audience smile, the P3/4/5 children told stories about going to the fireworks, the circus and even a cat food rap and the P6/7 class had two traditional Burns poems culminating in ‘Ad- dress to a Haggis.’
Earlier in the day Mrs Holyoake and Miss Brown in the kitchen had prepared the whole school a delicious lunch of chicken and rice soup, mince and potatoes or haggis, neeps and tatties and clootie dumpling or chocolate cake. Although only two of the children were brave enough to try the haggis there were comments of ‘yummy in my tummy’ from lots of the children! We were very lucky to have four special guests to join us for lunch including Mr Mor- rison who led us in the Selkirk Grace.
We would like to thank everyone who came along to celebrate Burns Day with us with special mention to Niall and Mirren for the wonderful music, Dr Dorothy Dennis, Mrs Jean MacDonald, Mr Morrison and Mr John Find- lay for joining us for lunch, Mrs Leask, Mrs MacFarlane and Mrs Murney for setting up the hall and Mrs Holyoake and Miss Brown for our delicious lunch.