Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

This week, we spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday out on the Mainland, staying overnight in Anderson High School Halls of Residence. It is really important to us as a school that the children have the chance to see their future lodgings for when they leave us in P7 and become familiar with new and exciting surroundings. We were even joined by past pupil, Freyja, who went on an evening wander with us round the Loch and to the Broch (and to Tesco to buy some snacks, of course).

On Tuesday afternoon, we drove to Sandwick Junior High School, who kindly hosted us for the afternoon and let us join in lessons. We had great fun making friends and meeting new people. We also spent Thursday at Sandwick too, joining in with their fabulous Sports Day. Seeing as we are a school of two pupils, we also think it is important to have this experience and Hollie and Jonathan were really impressed with how we joined in with all the different events – from standing long jump to sprinting to welly boot throwing. Everyone was so welcoming and kind to us and we would like to say a massive thank you to Sandwick! We cannot wait to visit again!

Wednesday was our “day in Lerwick”. We took the opportunity to visit the dentist, have one-on-one swimming lessons, spend our pocket money in Harry’s Department Store and visit the cinema to watch Lilo and Stitch. We even met a goat. In the evening, we drove to see Heidi and Harris (who used to live on Fair Isle). It was so lovely to be reunited with our friends for a playdate all evening.

What an adventure!

This term, we have been working on a personal self-directed project. Seeing as we are a pair of brothers who passionately support Manchester United (yes, it has been hard-going this season), we decided that our focus should be something related to this.

After looking at some options, we decided to build a model football stadium based on Old Trafford (The Theatre of Dreams). This has involved skills from subjects such as Technologies, Science, Social Studies and even some Maths (scaling). We have been hard at work with construction, circuitry and research.

Self-directed projects also give us the chance to work on those skills such as communication, collaboration and planning that are important too. Please take a look at our stadium in construction. We are going to play Subbuteo on the pitch when it is completed.

We were really thrilled to be interviewed by Martha Kearney from Radio 4 this week, during one of the cruise ship visits. She wasn’t here on a cruise ship but her and her colleague Alisdair were hear recording for her show. We always love it when a chance comes our way to put Fair Isle Primary School “on the map” and she asked us lots of questions which answered in an entertaining way. She was very lovely and gave us chance to talk lots and lots. Thank you Martha. We can’t wait to listen to the radio show when it comes out.

The puffin is a bird that is synonymous with Shetland and Fair Isle. They arrive at the end of April and can be seen on the coastal cliffs here, nesting in burrows. The weather has been so beautiful here on the isle recently so we could not resist setting off on a puffin search on Buness – the cliffs behind the haven.

They did not disappoint us! We encountered SO many puffins who let us creep really close to them. It is clear they are starting to use the burrows to establish their nests and it was fascinating to watch their movements.

Fun Fact: “Tammie Norrie” is a Scots word for puffin, usually used most in Shetland and Orkney.

We even had time for a game of beach cricket with one of our favourite people – Luke from the Bird Observatory.

The Fair Isle Bird Observatory is reopening this month after it burned down six years ago. Here at FIPS (Fair Isle Primary School) we really love and value the link we have with FIBO (Fair Isle Bird Observatory) and have some fun joint sessions planned in the coming months.

The first of these was to complete some rock pooling with Carla, the new ranger. She has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to marine biology so we headed down to the South Lighthouse and did some exploring. Luckily, the weather is lovely right now so we could hop from pool to pool and rock to rock on our searches. We found some creatures ranging from brittle stars to shore crabs and even some quick-moving fish and other creatures we are currently busy identifying (watch this space).

Thank you Carla. We are looking forward to working with you more!

Da Voar Redd Up
We have had a busy start to the term. The weather has been beautiful so we picked one of the nicest days to complete Da Voar Redd Up (The Spring Clean Up). Scouring beaches, ditches, quarries and verges, we collected well over five bags of rubbish ranging from magnum wrappers to plastic bottles. It is great to see our outdoor environment looking a little tidier and “bruck free”. Thank you to Eileen and Guillermo for providing us with yummy cakes half way round to keep us going too. Check out photos of us in action.

Ready for Cruise Ship Season
The first cruise ship visits Fair Isle on Thursday 1st May. Here at Fair Isle Primary School, we set up a stall in the hall and sell a selection of items to our lovely visitors. We have puffin bags, sheep bags, tea towels, postcards and a variety of beautiful cards too. There is even a “draw your own puffin” activity as well for people to do whilst they are here. We really enjoy chatting to people, telling them all about our school and running the stall too. Here are some pictures of us ready to go.

On Monday we welcomed Australian children’s illustrator, Tannya Harricks, into our school. She showed us some of her fabulous work and gave us a drawing lesson too.  Thank you for spending time with us Tannya.

The weather was so calm, sunny and settled that we ventured up Vaasetter on Monday afternoon.  From the cliff vantage point, Sheep Rock looks spectacular.  We enjoyed watching the fulmars and rolling down the hill too!

We continued our Japanese theme in literacy this week and tried writing Haikus.  It was quite tricky to get the 5,7,5 syllable pattern!

After looking at the forecast, we decided that Thursday was our final day of calm, sunny, settled weather.  We headed out to Finniquoy in the afternoon.  As part of our maths work, we counted 1000 strides to estimate one kilometre.  On our way home, we rescued and rehomed frog spawn from an almost dry ditch.

On Friday afternoon, we were happy to have Pat back for music.  Colourful Ukeleles today!

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

Last week we were really excited to welcome our new teacher, Jonathan, for a visit to Fair Isle.  Jonathan had a very long journey, with a ferry and 2 flights, all the way from Jura.  Luckily the weather played ball and he was able to fly in and see Fair Isle at its best.  Our new teacher loves the outdoors so we took him to explore some of our favourite places.

Jonathan was very keen to get some dirt onto his new trainers and we were able to show him the best mud to squelch through on North Reava.

Rockpooling and collecting bruk

Jonathan spent the whole of Friday with us so that we could all get to know each other.  We discovered that he is a Burnley fan and has a rescue cat called Tali who is coming to Fair Isle too.  We are really looking forward to welcoming him back after the Easter Holidays.

Thank you for coming Jonathan!

Luca, who loves seafood, was very keen to try sushi this week.  He kindly contributed some delicious salmon and we attempted to make sushi maki (rice with filling rolled in seaweed) and also nigiri (balls of rice with fish on top.) It was a challenge to get the rice to stick together but Fiona discovered that mashing with oil helped.  Both boys worked hard to prepare the feast and we enjoyed sharing it with Fiona and Hollie.  Ander was the star with chopsticks and persevered with almost every grain of rice on his plate!  Enjoy the photos.

The new term began with some wild weather and Lucy was unable to get to Fair Isle.  Ruth held the fort for week 1 and did a great job of sorting, cleaning and organising with the boys for the term ahead.

With the arrival of a Japanese film crew on the island, we decided to start the year with a mini project on Japan.  Ander was particularly keen to learn to speak and write Japanese and Luca is keen to learn about Japanese food. Fiona did some beautiful Japanese fish art work with the boys.

We learned that in Japan, people send New Year cards instead of Christmas cards.  We thought that our friends Harris and Heidi would like New Year cards too.

We are lucky to have so many people to help us in school.  Pat began the new year with some bulb planting, ukelele and recorder.

Both boys are working hard on their maths targets. Luca is learning about fractions, decimals and percentages and the connections between them.  Ander is working on numbers to 100 and different strategies to add and subtract.

For part of our literacy, we have started free writing every morning for 3 minutes to try to give us the confidence to write more.

As well as teaching the boys a hip-hop dance routine in PE, Hollie has been very busy organsing our nursery in preparation for Brodie starting in February.  Nursery is looking fantastic and we are all really looking forward to Brodie joining us.

The Nursery Message Area

We have had an unusually settled week of weather with some beautiful January skies.

Our Daily Mile                              Limpet collecting after school

Next week, if the weather allows, Ander is keen for us all to go on an expedition up Malcolm’s Head with our lunch. We will also be learning about school life in Japan and tasting some Japanese food.  Look out for the photos!