Category Archives: citizenship

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!

Children in Need

At Dalbeattie Primary we have raised approximately £380 for Children in Need and a further £150 for sponsoring a young person’s education in Malawi as our yearly pledge to the Janice Jamieson Memorial Foundation. Through the week
 we have been raising money with our spotty ball pit lucky dip and through having a non uniform day. 11 lucky winners won Pudsey prizes because their lucky ball numbers were picked from the hat. Well done the School Pupil Council  for organising this and working hard to co-ordinate the drawing of the ball numbers. Thank you all for your terrific support for these charities.

Children In Need Next Week

Children in Need

Next week is Children in Need Day (on Friday 17th)

The School Pupil Council would like to re-run the spotty ball lucky dip again for the chance to win one of an array of Pudsey prizes: a colour photo will also be uploaded on school blog page and on Facebook.

Please note this is this is a voluntary activity. There is no expectation for all children to participate as we are mindful of cost to families. (Last year the children brought in £1 per ball which they drew out of the ball pit to reveal their lucky numbers. Many children brought in money for multiple balls.)

Two separate activities are detailed further below*.

*LUCKY BALL PIT  DIP

This year, we would like to keep it a little more manageable. It will be £2 per ball and is limited to ONE ball only per child.   Please note, it is optional to participate.

Because we shall be carrying out ball pit lucky dips at lunchtimes, we really need your child to bring his/her donation in an envelope clearly labelled with name and class. Envelopes will be collected in first thing on each of the three mornings. We want to avoid money getting lost between 9am and lunchtime.

Ball pit lucky dips will be on set days as follows:

P7, P6/7, P6 and P5 classes will be on Wednesday 15th November at lunchtime

P4/5, P4, P3 and P2/3 will be on Thursday 16th November at lunchtime

P1/2 and P1 will be on Friday 17th November at lunchtime

Please can your child only bring his/her £2 ball lucky dip money on the correct day. Numbers will be drawn from the hat at Friday’s assembly to decide the winners. Thank you!

*NON UNIFORM DAY FRIDAY 17TH

On Friday 17th November it is actual Children in Need Day. On this day, we shall not be doing any extra activities but the children would like to have a non uniform day (wearing something bright or yellow or spotty if possible.) Suggested donations of £1 per child can be brought in on this day. Any money collected for the non uniform event will be shared equally between Children in Need and The Janice Jamieson Foundation Trust to sponsor a young person’s education in Malawi. Thank you for your support!

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

Rag Bag Week

This week on Thursday is our Rag Bag Collection day. Please do send unwanted clothes in if you have any on Tuesday or Wednesday but definitely by 9am on Thursday.  Clothes can be in any type of bag. Your support in this is much appreciated as the weight collected determines a payment for school which goes into our ongoing eco work. This is just a small idea of how you have helped us in the past!

 

House and Sports Captain Posters

Tomorrow the staff and children in school will be voting for this years house and sports captains. Those that are standing for these posts had to create posters and short videos about themselves and gives reasons as to why they would make a good house or sports captain. There have been 21 P7s put themselves forward for these roles which is fantastic to see. Pictures showcasing posters are below and we will let you know about successful candidates in due course.

One Planet Picnic

Dalbeattie Primary has just held its One Planet Picnic, an initiative encouraged by Eco Schools Scotland to build awareness of locally sourced food items in order to help with working towards sustainability and reduction of our carbon footprint. For our ‘One Planet Picnic’ we not only created our own home baking using home grown produce but we encouraged the children to bring in their own morning snacks, which were locally sourced, to tell their classmates about at morning breaktime at ‘Snack  and Chat’ time. We are very grateful for everyone at home for supporting this event so well. We were amazed by the amount of snacks children brought which had been locally sourced in some way. There was everything from home grown apples and carrot sticks to items baked locally together with local cheese and pate. There were some wonderful ideas of things to bring in. Meanwhile, on the same day, the Eco Schools Group had been busy, along with Mrs Houston from the High School’s Hospitality Department, baking individuals carrot muffins using home grown vegetables. The cakes were delivered to the classrooms later on the same day for our pupils to enjoy,  following on perfectly from Mrs Duncan’s Harvest Assembly earlier in the day. Primary 6 also had a go at baking bread using some of their own home grown wheat.