Last Friday was our final session with Ranger Sally (Fair Isle Bird Observatory) before she leaves Fair Isle for her next venture, completing her masters and researching puffins! The children loved working with Sally this year and have enjoyed the activities she has organised, such as building a bug hotel, pond dipping, rock pooling, making trawler nets and searching for plankton, and citizen science projects like The Big Seaweed Search and submitting data from our annual beach clean (Da Voar Redd Up) to the Marine Conservation Society.

Most recently, Sally has taught the children about bird migration so our final session was a local walk to identify migratory birds. We found 10 different birds on the chart Sally gave us. We will miss Sally and wish her all the best!

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CHROMA came to Fair Isle and worked with us all week on a creative project.  It was about El Gran Grifon, a Spanish Armada ship that was wrecked on Fair Isle 435 years ago.  We met Claire, the producer, and the musicians – Lydia plays the oboe, Caroline plays violin, Stu plays clarinet and Jo plays the bassoon. We got to compose our own music and we learned an Elizabethan sword dance with Claire

We went to Muckli Uri Geo to collect shells, pebbles, bits of seaweed and other things.  We used these things to make necklaces and other crafts.  Jo showed us macramé knotting.

We did some writing in class as though we were the Captain’s hen aboard the Gran Grifon. The story was read out as part of our show.

We did a performance in front of the whole island.

Harris played the triangle and drums. Luca played a different sounding drum and Chinese bells. Heidi used a washboard looking instrument and castanets. Ander played a drum and triangle, and Freyja played the fiddle with bells on her foot!

Our story was read out loud whilst we played and then we did our sword dance; it was brilliant fun!

After that, Chroma played some really good Spanish tunes.

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