Our Learning Blog

At the Viking feast there was weaving and I did weaving.  For food there was stew, bread, fruit and mackerel and there was the viking name generator and runes.  We made up a saga with Jeremy.  We made our own sagas for display and we sang Godred Crovan and showed our anamation and a power point.

By Robbie

On Tuesday 4th October P4/5 went to Finlaggan museum and we found out lots of interesting things about Vikings and how Vikings lived.

By Emily

We went to Finlaggan this week and found out about Vikings on Islay. Then we found out about where they had council meetings if something went wrong. Next we got to see the chapel that had a fire place. Finally we got to go inside and see some viking things. The first thing you could see when we went in was the information desk with a real wooden carved tail and head.  They let us look at a model viking ship in a glass. After that we had lunch and came back to school and had our break.
by Danni

We had Body Works in the school, they were from Glasgow science center. We had lots of fun, do you know if you get a blow torch and icing sugar you put the icing sugar near the blow torch and it will go up in flames. The presenter was talking about the throat and vomit it was funny.
By Alicia

Hello my name is Annie.

On Thursday we had a Viking feast and we made stew, fruit salad and bread. Then we did some weaving and we got to see what our Viking name was in runes.  Our mum’s and dad’s got to try the food and they did some weaving and got there names in runes.  They watched our power point and our animation we made.

There was a Gaelic awareness day at Port Ellen primary school and all through the day we were doing lots of Gaelic activities.   Clare Jorden came in to help us sing Godred Crovan and she let us do harmonies and play musical instruments.  After lunch we had a game of Gaelic bingo and I was the first person to get a house. This is what you say when you get a house in Gaelic ‘thi’ that means house and we did exercises as well.
by Maisie, primary 5

Major General Alexander McDougall was one of the most important men involved in the American War of Independence. At Portantruan where he was born, a cairn to him was unveiled last Thursday, 1st September. This young boy, born on Islay in 1732, grew up to be a truly great man.
We went to Portantruan in a minibus and then we climbed a small hill to get to the cairn. It was overlooking the Major General’s place of birth. Lord George Robertson, people from the Bank of New York, Mr Oglivary and Mr Reavey from the Museum of Islay Life were there along with some invited guests. Lord Robertson gave a speech and then we left. The others went to have lunch.
The Major General was born in 1732 at Portantruan. His family left Islay to go to America when he was only 6 years old. When he was 14 he became a merchant seaman and then a privateer. The British put him in prison for five months because he thought that America should not be ruled by the British. After the war, he became the first President of the New York Bank. He died when he was only 53. His last act was to be carried on a stretcher to vote against paper money.
I was very honoured to have been invited to the unveiling and I thought that it was very interesting what Major General Alexander McDougall did. It proves to me that if you work really hard you can do anything you want. I wonder what he could have achieved if he had lived longer?
By Elinor Baker (P6)