Last week was Children in Need week, so we decided to host a coffee morning for the isle on Friday 17^th November.  We decided to raise money for two charities:  Children in Need and UNICEF.  We are learning about children’s rights this year. Through no fault of their own, children’s rights are not always met around the world.  This might be because of war, natural disasters or poverty.  The situation in Gaza/Israel is devastating. UNICEF is one of many charities helping to bring aid to people who need food, water and medical supplies. We are proud that we can do something to help.

For the coffee morning, we designed games such as: guess how many sweets in the jar, guess Pudsey’s birthday, an IRN BRU coin slide and an amazing raffle! Lots of people in the community gave us raffle items. Staff and parents made mouth-watering cakes and we made some tasty shortbread in school. The day before the coffee morning, we walked to the shop to buy all the ingredients plus some prizes, some raffle items and sweets for the jar. Later on, we made up the mixture and baked it in the oven. It was delicious!

On Friday morning, we set up the hall with UNICEF posters and pictures of Pudsey, along with all the tables and chairs needed.  We got to wear our fantastic Children in Need T-shirts which were special because… we got to colour them in which was fun, although we don’t know what will happen to them when we wash them!

As it was Triona’s birthday, the whole hall sang happy birthday to her and she had a little cake with a candle to blow out.  She turned 79.

Ander won the coin slide (again as he won this at the Harvest festival one).  Neil got the closest answer for the number of sweets in a jar (96 when there were 94). Andrew won ‘guess Pudsey’s birthday’ and got a box of chocolates. Many people won raffle prizes.  Eileen and Amy got huge boxes of school veg.  Luca won the Fair Isle knitted hat.  Gillian won the Shetland tea towel (that she put in!) and Dave and Elizabeth seemed to have very good luck!  Some BT workmen came along too which was nice of them and one of the workmen won the Terry’s Mint Chocolate Orange – he kindly gave it to the school kids to share between them… yum yum!

People bought many raffle tickets and gave generous donations on the door. Thank you to Ross Thomson for his amazing donation from afar.  In the end, we raised an incredible £600 that we split between the charities!  What an amazing community!

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The children had a fun day full of Halloween activities. Heidi and Ander did some Halloween spelling and addition. Luca and Harris wrote spooky stories with a focus on descriptive adjectives then read them to our Primary 1s. Freyja researched the history of Halloween to write a piece for the Fair Isle Times. All children created Halloween decorations in woodwork which involved measuring, sawing, hammering nails and decorating! We had a party in the afternoon with games and bobbing for apples. After school, the children and little Brodie went guising around some of the crofts, performing their Halloween sketch!

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