Opening the Jura Music Festival 2024
This year was a special one. The children at Small Isles were invited to open the festival on its 30th anniversary. All our P1-P7 children took part, as well as two returning S1 children who left us last year. Our younger children sung some fabulous songs, including a beautiful rendition of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” whilst our older children blew the audience’s socks off with epic drumming and an amazing version of “Hey Jude”. We are once again very fortunate to have renowned musician Giles Perring working with the children in school. What superstars!
Be Not Afraid of Greatness
Nothing says “ambitious” like tackling a Shakespeare play and that is exactly what our older children have been doing since the start of term. This is all part of the Shakespeare Film Festival (Google it, it’s super cool), which is a charity that sees children learn, perform and film 30 minute abridged versions of Shakespeare plays. The charity has patrons such as Dame Maggie Smith and happens all over the world. Learning Shakespeare is notoriously tricky but the 8 children in Mr Pye’s class have been nothing short of sensational and spent a whole week “on location” filming the various scenes. We couldn’t have done it without professional film-makers and parents Hugh and Jane Carswell, who gave up their time and joined us to make our children look like Holywood superstars.
A Trip to Bridgend Woods
On a day when the sun was making the water sparkle, Mrs Welch’s crew headed to Islay for a Literacy event in Bridgend Woods involving all the children in P1-3 across Islay and Jura (that’s over 80 children!). It was a great event with really fun activities based on the popular Julia Donaldson book “Room on the Broom”. From broomstick-making to scavenger hunts, the children had a really fun time and loved mixing and making friends with their peers from other schools. Well done for being such superstars. on a day when the sun was making the water sparkle, Mrs Welch’s crew headed to Islay for a Literacy event in Bridgend Woods involving all the children in P1-3 across Islay and Jura (that’s over 80 children!). It was a great event with really fun activities based on the popular Julia Donaldson book “Room on the Broom”. From broomstick-making to scavenger hunts, the children had a really fun time and loved mixing and making friends with their peers from other schools. Well done for being such superstars.
From Farm to Fork
Our amazing P1-P3 learners have a plot at the Community PolyCrub. They have been growing their own crops including lettuce, tomatoes and even chili as well. They harvested their crops to create some delicious salads and yummy sandwiches, which were universally popular. It was fantastic to see the journey of growing the food to munching it straight from our plates.
Fun at Finlaggan
As part of a Heritage project working alongside St. Andrew’s University and Islay Museum, our P5-P7 children headed to the ancient seat of The Lord of the Isles. We enjoyed finding out about the fascinating archaeology of the site as well as being able to virtually explore what life would have been like using Virtual Reality Headsets. It was a beautiful day, as you can see from the pictures.
