Category Archives: After School Activities

Beach Clean at Rockcliffe Success

 

Thank you all who turned up to take part in our voluntary beach clean at Rockcliffe today.  The event was organised by the Rotakids Club in partnership with the Eco Group.  Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for helping supply the equipment and to Mr and Mrs Cathro, our Rotakids coordinators. It was lovely to see so many of our pupils and their families come along in addition to Mrs Duncan and Mrs Stores, HT of Colvend and Kirkgunzeon. We now have quite a large box of varied plastic waste which will form the inspirations for some creative work for our ‘Future Museum’ later this term.

Beach Clean this Sunday 21st April

 

This is a little reminder about the voluntary beach clean this Sunday 21st April 1pm-3pm at Rockcliffe. The event is organised by the Rotakids in partnership with the Eco Group. Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for letting us borrow extra litter picking equipment. Any pupils attending should be accompanied by an adult. It is recommended that people park in the top car park and walk down to the beach because parking can be limited in the bay. No one needs to stay the entire event time. Folks can pop along for a short visit only and help us find some plastic. This will not only help the environment but will also help us in The Eco Group’s Future Museum idea, to be held later in the term,  which we will tell you more about later.

Disco Time

Two great discos this evening. Lots of dancing and lots of fun. Thank you to our parent conceal for organising the discos, staff for staying behind to support the event and RKDJ for the fantastic music as always. There are a valentine theme and we had borrowed a back drop form DHS which provide popular for group photos. Thanks Mrs Whalen of this.

Click on photos to see enlarged images.

Fair Achiever School Award

Dalbeattie Primary is delighted to have been awarded, once more, Fair Achiever Status on 17th November. Over the last two years the School eco group has been involved in activities during Fairtrade Fortnight. This has included class learning and making chocolate and banana muffins with donations of ingredients from local shops (Castle Douglas Tesco, Dalbeattie Co-op and Spar) which helped us to fundraise for the Fairtrade Foundation. In 2023, we also had a successful community challenge which involved pupils searching for Fairtrade products in local shops. We were praised for this in our feedback to our recent application. Thanks go to Dalbeattie Co-op, Londis and Spar for facilitating this activity and to CD Tesco for donating prizes.  Being a Fair Achiever School, means we can attach the logo, being held here by the Eco Group in our photo, to our school headed paper. Going forward, The Eco group has now been tasked with going away to think about ways to do a similar community challenge, to talk about at our next meeting, so that we can plan for Fairtrade Fortnight 2024!

October Holiday Activity Idea

We would like to remind you about this idea which was posted before the summer holidays. It has been extended through the October holidays and on to Friday November 24th in order to include three more weekends.  While it does require a trip to a beach, it is however a great activity for not only demonstrating some citizenship  through doing some beach cleaning but is also great for literacy and creative skills because the follow up activity encourages quite a bit of imagination to to be used!

Basically, the idea is to find an interesting piece of plastic and pretend you don’t know what it actually is. Imagine you are an archaeologist in the future who finds it and has to use guess work for what it might be!

Below is the original information sheet about the activity. Also provided below is a blank pro forma which can be downloaded and edited or printed off to be handwritten  on.  Mrs Howie has also had a go a trying a couple of examples herself for this- see pdfs below. However, the level of literacy in completed work by pupils will,  of course,  vary greatly depending on the level the young person is currently working at.  Entries from Early level and beginning First Level will use understandably less complex vocabulary and language. Completed pieces can be sent into school whenever they are finished but by Friday 24th November at the very  latest.  If we have a good response,  the School Parent Council has kindly agreed to help organise an after school event to display entries and plastic items in our very own Museum of the Future!  It is hoped we can run this event in Term 3. So please do visit a beach and start your search!

P.S If you are on holiday in Cornwall you might even find a piece of lego! (check out the story on BBC Sounds ‘Lego Overboard.’)

Mrs Howie example 1 pdf

Future Museum blank pro forma

Mrs Howie example 2 pdf

History Club

At our Ancient History After School Club on Tuesday 5th November, we welcomed along Andrew Nicholson, Archaeologist from Dumfries and Galloway Council. He explained, to the group, about the type of work he did and his role in advising when new planning applications come in, in case they affect any site history. He then showed the members of the club how to access three main websites which he uses every day in his work. We learned about how to search old maps, scheduled monuments and recorded historical artefacts and finds from particular places. It was really interesting.  This meeting was the first after our visit to Tongland Abbey. Next week’s meeting will be with Erica Johnson who will talk to us about the Moyle Hill Fort.