The school has just held its annual Easter Service in Dalbeattie and Kirkgunzeon Parish Church. After a welcome from Mrs Duncan, Primary 7 pupils re-told the Easter story followed by singing from the William Heughan Choir before the service was ended with some words and an Easter blessing from the minister Rev Fiona Wilson.
Primary 6 have just returned from a fantastic day at RHET’s Food and farming event at Wallets Mart in Castle Douglas. The event was organised by RHET’s Fiona Jamieson and it involved many local food and farming providers who helped to lead workshop activities about ‘Tractors,’ ‘Meat,’ ‘Dairy,’ ‘Cereals,’ ‘Deer’ and ‘Sheep.’
At lunchtime, the children were able to do some food tasting of burgers and venison sausages. They were received most favourably! GlenUrr ice cream also gave the pupils pots of ice cream to eat.
At the end of the day, the children also got to take part in an auction. Some of our pupils volunteered to be the auctioneers in the ring while other pupils took part in the bidding.
Our thanks go to everyone involved in this very successful day. We realise the sheer amount of organisation such an event takes. The pupils learned so much about food and farming. They now appreciate much more about the journeys taken by our livestock for it to be Scottish Quality Assured and about the processes which are used to turn cereals into flour and sheep’s fleece into wool.
On Monday 11th of March, 4 teams of P7 pupils from Dalbeattie Cluster participated in this years Rotary Quiz cluster heat. The teams all worked well together to answer questions about Literacy, Maths and Numeracy, Expressive Arts,Science and Technology,Scotland and Pot Luck. Teams were supported by members of Dalbeattie Rotary Club with Mr Cathro acting as Quiz Master for the event. The winning team from the cluster this year was Dalbeattie Primary who will now progress through to the next round within Dumfries and Galloway. Thank you to Dalbeattie Rotary Club.
Here are today’s Award Winners. Also at Assembly, we celebrated the achievement of the Primary 7 Burns Club winners. We had recitations from Katie Mein and Joy McCall who were first and second places in the poetry section. Ruari Webster was in 3rd place. We also appreciated the art work from Willow Caldow, Kerri O Dornan and Myah Forster who came 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the art competition to depict a scene from Tam O Shanter. A group of ladies were also recognised for their achievement in coming third in a walking competition in which there were 400 entries. Well done to all!
Thank you to everyone who supported our Fairtrade Snack in school today. So far we have raised £122 for the Fairtrade organisation. The success of the event was due greatly to the wonderful donations we had from Tescos, Co-op and Kinnairds supermarkets.
We were also pleased to welcome Mary van Zwanenberg from the Fairtrade Organsation to our assembly, later in the day. Mary reminded us all about the important message of trying to buy Fairtrade items as this gives the farmers a fairer deal.
The High School’s S3 Producers Market was a great success and the Primary School was delighted to be involved in it too. We are very grateful to all the support for our hampers. We had such an array of wonderful donations for each of our class hampers. A super sum (TBC) was raised for school funds. It was also great to see participation from some of our classes who had made items to sell at the market. Primary 4 made bird feeders, Primary 1 /2 re-wrapped shortbread in their own gift wrap design and Primary 3 /4 made Bunny Bag Treats. (Sorry no photos from the Bunny bag stall where items sold out so soon- However pictures are in a separate blog post.) Well done to Mrs Houston and her team in Dalbeattie High School who made this event such a success. See DHS Facebook page for more pictures.
The School Eco Group and Primary 5 have enjoyed some really interesting learning experiences when they had a visit from Courtney Rowland of the Galloway Fisheries Trust. The children were learning about Sparling Fish, a very rare species which only exists in three Scottish rivers nowadays despite being in fifteen in years gone by. The children learned about the number of eggs spawned, the migration of the fish upstream from estuaries and the fact that they smell like cucumber! We also learned about the problems they face: pollution, over fishing and migration barriers. We are very grateful to Courtney who not only prepared a really interested presentation but who also came equipped with a wonderful array of resources from worksheets to activities to board games, all connected to Sparling Fish. There are no excuses now for not remembering all the key facts. Thank you Miss Rowland!
P1/2 have been very busy this term – they have been learning all about Scottish food and traditions. They would like to say thank you to Miss Kirkpatrick and P3/4 for coming to show us some Highland Dancing. They all loved it and were learning lots of new moves which were Pas de Bas and the Highland Fling. They have also been baking this term as they baked their own shortbread which was great fun! On Tuesday they held a Burns Supper in the classroom which they planned in groups. They are very grateful to our Piper Shannon who gave us some of her lunchtime for piping in our Haggis and for Mrs Houston for letting us use the Home Economics kitchen to cook our haggis, neeps and tatties.
On the day itself, several of the pupils took part in saying the Selkirk Grace and the first verse of Address to the Haggis. Another child read out some facts about Burns to fufill the part of the Immortal Memory. The Toast to The Lassies and the Reply parts comprised of some jokes which the children had selected to perform in front of the class. To conclude the afternoon the children sang a verse of Auld Lang Syne and dance the Highland Fling. The children loved being able to try the haggis, neeps and tatties as this was a first for many. We would like to say a huge THANK YOU to Tesco in Castle Douglas for donating the haggis, neeps and tatties, it is much appreciated. The children’s favourite part of the afternoon was eating their homemade shortbread – it was very yummy!
Look at the wonderful new reading books we have received to add to our library collection. These are the Collins Big Cat books which we earned through all the tokens collected from the Sun newspaper. Thank you to all our parents who sent in so many tokens.
The school has enjoyed a lovely end of term service in Dalbeattie and Kirkgunzeon Parish Church. The Primary 7 pupils performed a play entitled ‘A Super Christmas,’ directed by Mrs Duncan, where some superheroes were rather worried when they thought they would be out of a job due to a ‘new superhero’ coming to the world. Meanwhile, some shepherds had also heard the news and were on the way to find baby Jesus, following a star which the angel had told them to about. On the way, they met the superheroes and all was explained. Eventually, they all found baby Jesus and the superheroes realised they could still have a useful job but that Jesus, as Saviour of us all, was there to help us all share God’s love and to feel part of his Church. Mark Smith then shared his message about Christmas with the children before we all sang the songs we had been practising, Child in a Manger and Ding Dong.
