Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

You may have read in our last blog about how we have been out and about in the community – this time being involved in a fascinating “time capsule” project at The Kirk. Marie, one of the island’s custodians of Fair Isle knitwear and who recently bought the Kirk, got in touch with us to launch the project. The stonemason, Magnus, working for Marie had the idea of planting time capsules in the newly rebuilt stonework for people in centuries to come to discover.

The school and Marie invited the Fair Isle community to put two time capsules into the stone gatepost pillars leading into the Kirk. We completed some lovely written work telling people who would open them in the future about who we were, what we love about Fair Isle (and our school) and what we thought life would be like in the future.

A good number of folk came down to the Kirk to help place items in the capsules, sign a Fair Isle tea towel with names and place the capsules inside the stonework. It was a lovely, collaborative and very meaningful morning. Please do have a browse of the pictures.

What a busy week it has been at Fair Isle Primary School. Carla, the ranger from FIBO (Fair Isle Bird Observatory) started off her sessions for the new school year with some fascinating biosecurity work. The children learned all about how the Obs team keep the island safe from rodents, who could have a really negative impact on our important birdlife here. We looked at how the data is collected and presented and then took off into the outdoors to aid Carla in checking the biosecurity boxes.

Another member of the community, Marie, invited us down to the Fair Isle Kirk. Marie is one of the island’s custodians of Fair Isle knitwear and has recently bought the Kirk to turn it into a community hub and space for people when visiting the island as part of her knitting holidays. The stonemason working for Marie had the idea of planting time capsules in the newly rebuilt stonework for people in centuries to come to discover. We had a fascinating chat about what life might be like one hundred years from now and had a think about what was important to us and what we would want anyone discovering the capsules to learn.

And finally, we had some very important visitors here this week who came to see our school. We loved having them in our school, showing them our learning and chatting to them about our unique context. Christie, our Shared HT from Sandwick, came with them too. Here is a picture of us waving goodbye to them on the plane (along with other photos relating to the first two paragraphs).

Our I.D.L topic this term is “Lighthouses”. Unsurprisingly, this features our local context, as we live in an island surrounded by notoriously choppy waters meaning these beautiful buildings are essential for seafarers who voyage near our shores.

There are two lighthouses in Fair Isle, one at the north and one at the south end of the island. We were particularly fascinated by South Lighthouse, which is closest to where we all live. Deryk, who has lived in Fair Isle for twenty seven years and who works for the N.L.B (Northern Lighthouse Board), kindly got permission from them for us to have a tour of the building and to ascend all 106 steps to see the light itself at the top. It was such as brilliant trip and we were able to learn a lot that will complement our learning.

Did you know?
South Lighthouse was the last lighthouse in Scotland to be automated in 1998.
Every lighthouse and its light has a special way of blinking during the night so seafarers know exactly where they are.
The Northern Lighthouse Board looks after 203 lighthouses across Scotland and the Isle of Man.
This particular lighthouse is 26 metres tall.

What a fabulous week it has been. We were fortunate enough to conclude the artistic element to the week by participating in “large” knitting with Marie, producing a beautiful blue masterpiece to hang proudly in the Fair Isle Community Hall.

Then, it was time to hear the pieces we composed being brought to life by the fabulous musicians of CHROMA. What was fascinating to observe was how the musicians involved our children in the editing process, allowing them to feed back on how their pieces sounded and make adjustments and tweaks.

It was then time for the Saturday night concert, where the pieces were given their “world premiere” in front of the island community. Naturally, we had to have a bow at the end of it in front of a rapturous audience. We would like to say a massive thank you to CHROMA for all their energy, hard work and thoughtfulness and the impact on our children in the arena of expressive arts is evident to see. We produced some personal thank you cards to send them on their way and look forward to welcoming them again into the school when the next project comes around.

CHROMA continues with yet more fabulous creativity and musicality. As well as composing our own blues music (more of that in coming blogs) using notation and knowledge of chords and scales, the children have been linking themes of blue in music to themes of blue in artwork.

Inspired by the artist Anna Atkins, we have learned about the chemistry behind cyanotype printing (did you know the word blueprint originates from this technique?) The community were invited to join us on a beach-combing expedition where we found items that we thought were curious. We then arranged them on special cyanotype paper to create our own beautiful prints.

It is CHROMA week at Fair Isle Primary School. We are very fortunate, as a school community and an island, to have this fabulous ensemble visit us every two years for a week of music-making and creativity. CHROMA have been visiting Fair Isle since 2002 and each visit includes working with the school on a music-led projects that involves art, crafts, creative writing and science. As part of this, the children learn notation language, music technique and structure and many other skills as well.

The theme this year is “Shetland Blues” and is partly inspired by the wonderful Marie (a knitter and crofter who lives in Fair Isle) and her shades of Shetland masterpiece.

So far, we have been learning about lots of different instruments, experimenting with rhythm and beat and even beginning to dip our toes into music-writing too. There has also been the chance to experiment with cyanotype and watercolour, something we will develop further in the coming days. The children have fully embraced all the different concepts they have been introduced to so far and really have been working hard on all the different skills.

More information about CHROMA can be found here: CHROMA

We always enjoy our now well-established school grounds morning at the start of term. The elements here in Fair Isle mean that our outdoor equipment is a little bit more exposed than in a lot of other schools so we always take good care of our beautiful playground environment and do our best to prepare it for the autumn and winter that lie ahead.

Our vegetable garden is looking resplendent and we cannot wait to start harvesting our crops, especially the cabbage, onions and carrots!

As ever, we invited the community to help us with tasks from weeding, cleaning and sorting. It is great to see our children working alongside adults to look after our green spaces. On a morning like this, we naturally need a bit of an extra boost so some adults brought in sweet treats that kept us going.

It was fantastic to welcome the children back to school today for the first day of an exciting new school year. It was lovely to see new friendships being forged as we all stepped foot into the classroom (and ELC) to see what new learning awaited us.

For those of you who follow our blog regularly, please do stay tuned for future blogs (or have a read of our previous ones). It promises to be an action-packed term.

Please click on the link below to watch a picture video containing some of our highlights from across the 2025-2026 school year. We couldn’t possibly fit every single moment into one video but this definitely gives you a flavour of life at Fair Isle Primary School. It’s been a tremendous year and we cannot wait for more adventures next year.

Your television screens may be filled with news about the World Cup, but we have been sampling a different sport this term here at Fair Isle Primary School. The children have really taken to cricket and have worked exceptionally hard on catching, throwing, fielding and those hand-eye coordination skills for bowling and batting. At all ages and stages, they have made lots of progress. To celebrate our new-found enjoyment of this game, we decided on one of the nicer days in the final week of term (trust us, there’s been no heatwave in Shetland) to invite the Fair Isle community for a friendly game where we could apply our skills.

Lots of folk turned out for what was a fabulous morning with lots of fearsome bowling, extravagant six-hitting and some impressive diving catches. We also think our “cricket pitch” down at the South Lighthouse surely must rank as one of the more scenic settings in Scotland. A brilliant day.