Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

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.

During Term 4, the P1-P7 children have very much been taking ownership of and leading their learning in the form of personal self-directed projects. We feel this is a really valuable aspect of learning as it encourages all those skills of communication, curiosity, independence and collaboration. Also, we believe that children learn best when they are pursuing their own interests and immersing themselves in something that they would love to learn about.

Across all ages and stages, the children have embraced their projects. We have had a fashion project, which included the design and making of an actual (and exceptionally beautiful) dress to wear, a project on the Hercules plane with a plan to make a model of one – as you’ll see from the pictures we think it is simply sensational, and a “Fishing around Fair Isle” project with tasting menus, quizzes and practical activities involving fishing equipment. All three children asked members of the community to visit school to work alongside them during their projects so a massive thank you to Neil, Anne and Steven for their engagement with the children.

To celebrate, we had a showcase event in the hall where we presented our projects and invited all the Fair Isle community to come and see them and ask us about our learning. As ever, we received lots of support and spoke confidently about our learning, receiving lots of positive comments as we did so. Check out the pictures.

Our last school trip of the year followed swiftly on from our previous one a few weeks ago. Sandwick Sports Day, Shetland Museum, Lerwick Police Station (trying not to get locked in a cell), Clickimin Swimming and much more besides made for a very memorable final stay as a group of three. Please enjoy this bumper set of photographs that summarise what a wonderful time we had.

Those regular readers of our blog will know how important our enrichment trips are to us and this one was no exception. The children have been absolutely superb throughout – supporting and encouraging one another, working together and being superstars in all we did. Jonathan and Hollie were, once again, so impressed with how the children plunged (quite literally, as you’ll see from one photograph) into all that we had planned.

There are many people to thank for our trips across the year and we made sure to write thank you cards to swimming instructors, hostel staff and even The Maxwells (who always welcome us for a playdate at Hamnavoe). A special thank you, however, on this trip to all the staff at Tingwall Airport and the airfield crew back in Fair Isle for getting us home before the fog set in. As you’ll see from the final photograph, it was a good job we made it home.

A lot of planning and effort goes into the trips our bairns take part in so we are grateful to everyone for making them happen. Now for the final fortnight of term with lots of exciting events “back at base” planned.

Just a normal week at Fair Isle Primary School.

It’s been very busy recently with the end of term fast approaching. We are heading to the mainland for the second of our enrichment trips this term shortly but, in the meantime, we thought you’d like a little peek into what we’ve been up to lately.

Local fisherman, Steven Wilson (who is also helping with a P6 project on fishing), volunteered to come into school to do a talk to the children. We were fascinated to learn all about how he first began his journey on the high seas and how the life of a fisherman works around our isle. Jonathan and Hollie were very impressed with how well the children identified all the different types of fishing equipment he brought in for us to get “hands-on” with and would like to say a big thank you for answering all our questions and preparing some fascinating resources and information for us.

Our sessions with Carla the Ranger from F.I.B.O (Fair Isle Bird Observatory) continued with some super rock pooling down at South Lighthouse. We love plunging into the outdoors and being curious, free and explorative – diving under rocks and seeing what we can find. This visit did not disappoint. We had starfish, soft-shell crabs and even a beautiful sea urchin. The fish we found made a bid for freedom and evaded capture but we are always careful to put rocks and sea creatures back where we found them and respect our seashore environment.

Finally, we had a visit from our police officer – Bryan. Bryan is stationed in Lerwick in mainland Shetland but comes out to visit our isle from time to time to chat to the community and make sure we are law-abiding citizens. He is fabulous and we love having him in school. He took us through all his equipment, how it is used and talked to us about the work life of a police officer. We even had time to be placed in handcuffs and try on his rather large police jacket and hat. Thank you so much for visiting us and we are looking forward to a tour of Lerwick Police Station when we venture out soon.