Many congratulations to Margaret Shields, Drongan’s Catering Superviser, as she celebrates her 50th wedding anniversary today. They say the way to a man’s heart is via his stomach and I’m sure Margaret’s husband would agree.

The winning house last term was Doon.  As a treat all the Doon pupils got a movie afternoon on Friday complete with ice cream and popcorn.  A fun afternoon was had by all.

Today we have been spending time getting our ePortfolios sorted out.  They now have pages built and users added.

Many congratulations to all our Scots poetry competition winners. I’m certain that the judges had lots of difficult decisions to make. Congratulations also to our musicians and dancer, not to mention Mr Maddocks and his piano and guitar accompaniments. A great afternoon at Drongan.

Pupils in P3, P3/4 and P4 are using the straight line drawing tool and the fill tool in Paint to create Mondrian style pictures.  They are spending a few weeks learning about all the tools available in Paint.

The Nature Club at Drongan Primary is going to be running a crisp packet recycling scheme with Terracycle.  The scheme will boost the school funds, help the environment and create a greater awareness of environmental issues.  Soon there will be advertising posters in various locations around the village.  Please do your bit to help the school and the planet by collecting empty crisp packets and bringing them into the school.

Our pupils went home with lovely new battery boxes today in which to collect used batteries to be returned to school and counted by the pupils in P6b.  Why?  Because Drongan Primary is taking part in the Duracell Big Battery Hunt again this year.

Taking the Duracell Big Battery Hunt nationwide. This year 554,255 pupils from 2,379 schools countrywide are registered to take part and with the support of We Are Futures, Duracell has developed free educational materials to help teachers facilitate lessons, shape assemblies and homework for the pupils around the issue of and science behind recycling. Duracell created a battery collection box that children can personalise to encourage the positive impact of recycling batteries and has provided schools with 5L and 30L recycling bins in which schools can deposit the hoards of used batteries

The first results are in!Thanks to the recycling enthusiasm of Britain’s school children the initiative has collected more than 2.3 million used batteries, that’s an average of four batteries per pupil registered – and is on track to collect 278 tonnes of used batteries. That’s the same weight as 56 elephants!

https://nationalschoolspartnership.com/initiatives/bigbatteryhunt/

Pupil members of the Dyslexia Friendly Schools committee visited classes today to explain the contents of our Learning Boxes and to describe how the items could be used to aid learning.

As part of the Local School Nature Grant received from Learning through Landscapes a free training/information session is being held in the school grounds during the afternoon of Thursday 17th January.  Parents of some of the Nature Club pupils are coming along to learn about what can be done to increase the biodiversity of the school,grounds.

In November the Nature Club received 30 trees and 30 hedging bushes free from the Woodlands Trust.  With the help of the East Ayrshire Outdoor Amenities Team an area was chosen in which to plant the trees.  Half the trees were planted before the Christmas break but bad weather called a halt to progress.  The rest of the trees will be planted once the club starts up again in the new session.