Please bring any bags of unwanted clothes by this Friday 19th April for our Rag Bag Collection. Any clean bags will do. Remember, the greater the weight collected, the more money we receive to help us with our ongoing eco work. Soon we will be planting our vegetables; money from Rag Bag will help us to cover the cost of our seeds. Thank you!
Last week the Eco Committee gave a super presentation about their recent litter survey in the playground. They also highlighted an event this coming Sunday 21st April: Rotakids, in partnership with the school Eco group, are organising a beach clean at Rockcliffe between 1pm and 3pm. Please do come along. No one needs to stay for the entire two hours. Just pop along for however long you can stay, with an adult accompanying you, and help pick up some plastic. It is planned to bring the plastic finds back into school as a stimulus for some creative writing, later, for our Future Museum. This is an idea the Eco Committee had some time ago. Well done to those people who undertook this activity in their own time. The plan is now to create some more exhibits for our ‘Future Museum’ with some collaborative writing in groups back in school using the bits of plastic we find on Sunday. More information on this is to follow later. Thank you Rotakids and Mr and Mrs Cathro for organising the event on Sunday. Thank you Dalbeattie Community Initiative for lending us extra litter pickers. Activities like this also help the Eco group to carry out their work and to complete activities towards their next 9th green flag application. It is recommended that people use the top car park at Rockcliffe and walk down to the beach where we will have equipment ready.
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!
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.
Our Eco Schools work has been a little different this term as we are keeping to working within our bubbles. As last year’s committees did not complete a year of work, we have continued with the previous committee members time being. Recently the ‘upper school bubble’ has been working on a few projects. Over the term, we have harvested vegetables and set them out for parents and carers to make use of in return for donations. This was instead of making soup for the whole school, which would have been difficult due to current restrictions. We raised £70 through this. The eco councillors have also been lifting last year’s Edina bulbs and re-planting them, re-filling the bird feeders and having a look through the outdoor curricular linked learning resources, paid for by a kind donation from Dalbeattie Rotary Club, which have arrived so far.
Two Outdoor Challenges
Over the remaining weeks of school, why not have a go at one of these two challenges. Please send any photos of your activities by Tuesday 30th June. Thank you
Click the link below for an activity to do with your family. Please email Mrs Howie the answers and, if possible, a photo of you taking part in the activity, which can then be posted on the school blog.
2: One Planet Picnic
As an end of term treat, why not plan a socially distanced ‘One Planet Picnic’:
What is a One Planet Picnic? What is different about a One Planet Picnic?
Why hold a One Planet Picnic? There are many reasons. Here are some we can think of:
If you would like more background information from Eco Schools, you can click on the link below for more information. However, remember to carry out your picnic according to the most recent guidance from the Scottish Government in relation to which Phase of the Route map we are in at the time of your picnic.
Please do send a photograph of your picnic!
https://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/media/1562030/opp-guide-2018-final-210818.pdf
Today, in school, we marked the start of Fairtrade Fortnight with our ‘Fairtrade Morning Snack.’ This was helped greatly by donations from local businesses Co-op, Tesco and Kinnairds. The main snack on offer was a choice of Fairtrade bananas or our own crafted shortbread biscuits topped with chocolate and jelly beans. At the time of writing, we are not sure what amount of money we have raised from this but any proceeds will go to the Fairtrade Foundation. Later in the day, Primary 5 together with the school’s Eco Committee listened to a very informative presentation by Mary Van Zwanenberg which included a very interesting film ‘Guardians of the Rainforest.’ Many of our classes also took part in class learning. Primary 1/2 had lots of Fairtarde themed activities in the open area. The end of Fairtrade Fortnight will be marked at assembly on 6th March with a small play by the Eco Committee.
Today in assembly, we celebrated our Scots Poetry Competition work with certificates being presented to first, second and third place finalists. The first place winners then entertained the whole school with a recitation of their chosen poems. Today, also saw the visit of our guests from Dalbeattie Burns Club who judged not only the Primary 7 pupils who recited an excerpt from Robert Burns’ Tam O’ Shanter but also the art work, which depicted a scene from the same poem.
The results were: Primary 1: First – Corey Canochan; Second- Henry Hicks; Third- Sophie Geddes ; Primary 1/2: First- Mollie Watson; Second- Finlay Bell; Third Equal: Lexie Anderson and Evie McGougan; Primary 2/3: First Equal- Jack Little and Amalie Wykes; Second- Aidan Galbraith; Third Equal- Elise Wixon and Reuben Benson; Primary 3: First- Lucy Johnstone; Second- Katie Dickie; Third Equal- Rebecca Hird and Oliver Bonnar; Primary 3/4: First- Anaya Nerestan; Second- Isla Smith; Third Equal- Rory McCormick and Lucy Bell; Primary 4/5: First- Ava Drummond; Second Equal- Fern Lundy and Sam Donnelly; Third Equal- Ailsa Ferguson and Owen O’Dornan; Primary 5: First- Chloe Campbell; Second- Struan Caldow; Third Equal- Hayden Berry and Elsie Gibbs-Brown; Primary 6: First- Fabio Murray-Sanchez; Second Jack Johnstone; Third- Owen Bryson; Primary 6/7 (photo to follow) : First- Eve McCall; Second Equal- Liam Bourhill and Laith Atkinson Deacon; Primary 7 Poetry Recitation of Tam O’ Shanter: First- Maddison McMurtrie; Second- Thomas Jardine; Third- Jessica Davidson; Primary 7 Poetry Art Work of Tam O’ Shanter: First- Rhys Gaffney; Second- Carrie Davidson; Third- Amber Latimer.
Also in our assembly, Primary 4/5 drew the raffle for the completed Titanic Quizzes. The winner, receiving £10 was Lucy Simpson. Our Primary 5 class was awarded with the Wow tracker Active travel to School Award. Finally, Roman Bond and Chloe Campbell reminded us all that the first day back after the February holiday (Monday 24th) will be Fairtrade Snack day with biscuits (shortbread with chocolate and jelly bean) costing 60p and bananas 40p. Pupils can buy two items each. All products used carry the Fairtrade logo. Proceeds from the snack will go to the Fairtrade foundation, in keeping with our targets to retain our ‘Fair Achiever School’ status.
At our assembly today, our pupils from each class were awarded with their Head Teacher’s certificates and pencil as prizes. Also, we were delighted to welcome three senior students from the High School who gave the primary school children a presentation as part of their work for Environmental Awareness week. The power-point was very informative and stimulated some good discussion. We are sure some of the messages will now be taken more seriously as a result of the example shown by these older students. Well done and thank you! By the end of Friday, Christmas decorations arrived but the children haven’t seen them yet….
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