Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

We are raising awareness that The Great British Beach Clean is taking place up and down the United Kingdom from the 19th September to 28th September 2025. Here in Fair Isle, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work down at Muckle Uri Geo, the stony beach by our South Lighthouse. We planned our clean with Carla the Ranger and local resident David (who is also the Education Officer from the Fair Isle Marine Research Organisation). They helped us understand the science and methodology behind a beach clean: we had to record each item we found so we can input the data in school next week. It was, once again, fantastic to be joined by parents and community members who spend a good two hour scouring the shores. We filled quite a few bin bags and buckets so overall we counted it as a highly successful mission.

Please think twice before buying or discarding single-use plastic!

At Fair Isle, we love taking the learning in our own direction. Our chosen topic this term is “Dragons” (we know, cool right?). As well as linking this to skills in Literacy and Science, we wanted to direct our own learning in a way that would see us collaborate and be creative together. After discussing our ideas, we decided we wanted to make our very own board game. Thus, “Dragons and Ladders” was born.

We looked at what a good board game involves, how to make it colourful and appealing to potential players and how it should be challenging but not super-difficult. We made our own prototype and have begun our preparation to transfer ideas onto an actual foldable board. We have been testing different materials to give our game a 3D aspect (felt was a definite winner) and have been busy working in our STEM room to create ladders, pieces and other accessories. We even converted a shoebox into a box to hold our board game using technology and computing skills.

Stay tuned for pictures of the “finished product”.

Our peerie school is a busy place this term. Now there are children in the nursery and in P1, we thought it was the perfect opportunity for teaming up and having some joint sessions together. This really aids transition and, of course, gives us lots of time to play and learn alongside one another. We have been looking at what activities we like choosing in our indoor environment and have been busy in the mud kitchen making potions, pies and tea. Naturally, everyone else wanted to join in too.

We once again took to the outdoors on Friday with an “expedition” led by Nick Riddiford. Nick is a resident of Fair Isle who is an expert in biodiversity with over 130 publications and the winner of many an award. Most importantly, however, he possesses all the necessary “bug hunting” equipment that we loved using as we journeyed up to Sprittery Hole. As well as looking closely at the vegetation and habitat, we also spent time hunting for the Iberian Water Boatman (Corixa iberica). It was fascinating to learn all about how it tries to survive and thrive here in Fair Isle. Carla the Ranger joined us too and we had lots of fun. Please do read Nick’s scientific write-up of our expedition, found here: Fair Isle school Sprittery Hole Bioblitz

We had a wonderful afternoon on Wednesday where we invited the community to help us weed, strim, de-moss, clean and tidy the playground and garden area. The weather was really kind to us and we had a good few hours working together with trowels and spades in hand. It is always so lovely to work alongside other adults in our tight-knit community. Naturally, if we were digging, we had to have cake so a big thank you to Eileen and Nair from the Bird Observatory for bringing tasty snacks to keep our energy levels topped up.

If you read our blogs regularly, you’ll notice we are quite fortunate here in Fair Isle to have resident artists visiting from all around the world. Lori Deeley came here all the way from Newfoundland in Canada. She kindly came into school to teach us all about what she does. She makes her own paint from natural materials such as shell, ash and bone. We had a go at making and using our own paint using a really cool creative process involving pestle and mortar and Gum Arabic. It was so much fun. We then did some gesture drawing and worked with charcoal which was very interesting and made us think about how to draw people in motion.

More of Lori’s work can be found here: Home | Mysite

Thank you for visiting us, Lori.

It was fantastic to welcome Jennifer, our Active Schools coordinator, to Fair Isle this Friday. The weather was kind and her flight made it here. She did some “Bikeability” training with us, including keeping yourself safe, pedalling and balancing. It was great to see all three of our learners, right from P1 up to P6 accessing these key skills. She even delivered an extra session to our P6 learner focussed on road safety in built up areas, such as signalling and stopping at junctions. Thank you for visiting us, Jennifer.

Today, we were very lucky to have a visit from Claire White. Claire is from mainland Shetland and is a fiddler and singer-songwriter who has been playing for the last thirty years – travelling worldwide performing and teaching music. Therefore, we were very lucky and grateful she chose to visit us here in Fair Isle. She taught us some wonderful songs, wowed us with her beautiful fiddle playing and unleashed our creativity through joint storytelling. For us, it was really fascinating to combine music, heritage and the Shetland dialect (Shaetlan). She even brought her children along too so we could all learn and play together. Thank you for visiting us, Claire!

It has been simply wonderful to welcome our learners back to school after the summer holidays. Our three primary pupils now range from P1 up to P6 and are such a creative and collaborative team already. Seeing as the weather is still nice 59 degrees north here in Fair Isle, we took to the beach at The South Lighthouse on our first day back. We worked together to complete a scavenger hunt (finding objects smooth, transparent, scented and feathery – amongst other items) and did some stone-skimming and limpet racing (who knew that was a spectator sport?). We love being in the outdoors and connecting with nature.

It’s been a lovely (if not typically windy) week here in Fair Isle. One of our favourite people, Carla the Ranger, invited us to take part in a shore watch as part of the work the Bird Observatory does. This is much more technical than you might think: scanning the horizon in specific sections for certain amounts of time. Whilst there were no orcas on display today, we saw plenty of puffins, gannets, arctic terns and other feeding seabirds. We even attracted the attention of a yacht coming into the island.

As ever, we love connecting with nature around our beautiful island.