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The Coffee Morning Children's Competition

Scattered among the various exhibits at the Coffee Morning were placed ten photos taken locally, each bearing a Childrens Competition label with a number. The children had to find each picture and write down what it was. Many were of course quite easy, some were more challenging. The may trees in Rollo Park of course gave no trouble. We weren't strict with the marking, and accepted 'the park' as a suitable answer for this one.

This one shows the clock in the top of St Serf's Church tower. Because the steps in the tower are really quite dangerous, being steep, badly lit and very badly worn, the public do not have access. It's doubtful whether any of the children have actually seen this, but we believed they might be able to guess what it was. In fact most of them did, although one answer we accepted was 'the thing that works the bells'.

We were more strict with this one. 'The old house' only got half marks. This is the oldest house in Dunning and is known as the Straw House. The story is that when Dunning was burned by retreating Jacobites in 1715 this was the only house left. The wife burned damp straw inside, creating enough smoke to make the soldiers think it was already on fire.

No one had any trouble with the war memorial, and we gave full marks for 'the cross that reminds' from one of the younger entrants. On the other hand several didn't recognise the ventilator on the top of the primary school roof even though they see it every day. To be fair, it had many adults guessing too.

There was only one all correct entry so there was no need for a draw, and the winner was pleased with her prize. However, the lowest score was 7 and most managed 8 or 9 so the level of challenge must have been about right, and of course the children enjoyed searching out the pictures as well as identifying them.