Primary 5/6 have been very lucky today and spent our first day back on a trip to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. It was a very interesting day, we learned loads and had a lot of great fun too.

When we arrived, some of us were surprised because we had to go through security. Lauren said it was just like the airport but Nathan didn’t really like it. After that we met Ian, our super guide for the day. We went into a room and found lots of different items on our chairs. Each row had something different and we had to try to work out what each of them had to do with Scottish Parliament. We did really well and everyone was really impressed.

After that we learned a little bit more about the History of the Scottish Parliament. We learned some great facts about the Old Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Parliament as it is today. We played a game in our teams where we had to guess whether different powers were reserved for the UK government or were devolved powers for Scotland. We quite often had a split vote, but we had a lot of fun trying to work it out. When the workshop was almost over, we each got the chance to take part in a special quiz on iPads. Olivia stole the show and had the highest score at the end, well done!

We were also lucky enough to have a guided tour of the building. We learned about the 3 stages that a bill goes through before it becomes a law. We were very well behaved and were allowed to sit in the fancy leather chairs in the conference room. We even got to use the special microphones, there’s a rule though that only one person can talk at a time, Miss Brennan liked that.

We got a group picture taken in the debating chamber and seen the real mace which we learned is made of pure Scottish silver and gold. We were very surprised that it weighs less than a kilogram because it’s pretty big, but that’s because although it’s pure, it’s not solid. Our guide told us that the mace represents power and is a reminder to the MSPs of the power they have on behalf of the people.

It was a very fun experience and we learned lots of new facts about the Scottish Parliament. What a great day!