Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

Last Thursday we visited the museum.  Stewart answered all our questions!  Here are some of the things we found out:

One of the oldest exhibits in the museum is the canon from the Spanish Armada boat called El Gran Grifon.      Harris

We tried to count the number of shipwrecks around the island. We think there were 67 shipwrecks.      Luca

The Vikings came to Fair Isle a very long time ago.      Ander

The rock which Fair Isle is made of is Old Red Sandstone. There is also a seam of calcite which runs from Raeva right across the island.      Luca

The rarest bird on Fair Isle is Chestnut-eared bunting.      Harris

The Heinkel started flying from the North of Germany on a reconnaissance mission. Hurricanes shot it down over Sumburgh Head and it crash landed on Fair Isle. The pilot and one other survived. Stuart and Hollie met the pilot when he came back to visit in 1999. We can see parts of the plane in different places on the island.      Ander

Last week, professors from the University of Nottingham visited the isle as part of their project called Ragna’s Islands.

See their blog here : https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/ragnasislands/

They held a school and community event to explore Fair Isle’s Viking roots. Judith spoke about her current work on translating Orkneyinga Saga. We looked at Viking artefacts like a brooch, a comb with runes carved in it and a soapstone mould for making brooches. We wrote our names in runes and also discussed place names around the isle that come from old Norse.  When in Shetland last week, we selected some Viking books from the library. We learned in one of them, why runes were made of straight lines. This is because it was easier to chisel into wood or stone. We decided to chisel our own names in runes at our woodwork station, along with ‘Fair Isle.’ It was lovely to spend the morning with others in our community, and to enjoys some refreshments (cake of course)!

Monday

Upon arrival, we had a quick lunch at the hostel flat then headed to Clickimin pool for our first swimming lesson. Afterwards (following a well-earned snack of course), we walked to Bolts to collect the minibus then had a fun time playing at Hayfield Park before nipping to Tesco to stock up on more snacks and goodies for the week ahead.

It was so lovely to sit with Freyja and Grace at dinnertime and catch up.  As this was our only decent day of weather, we decided to visit Meal Beach in the early evening for some fresh air and fun. It didn’t take long for socks and shoes to come off for a chilly paddle in the sea!  Back at the flat, we ate a healthy supper of fruit before bed.

Tuesday

As forecasted, the weather was horrendous but luckily all activities today were indoors!  The rain was so heavy we even used the mini-bus to get to the pool (just around the corner) for our lesson!  Our next stop was UHI for some STEM activities.  We explored the senses box – everyone loved the upside-down glasses! We did some coding with Botley, the programmable toy, and had a turn using the VR headset!  We were also given a tour of the building to learn about different careers studied like nursing, teaching, construction, art, textile, hairdressing and cookery!

Our final activity for the day was a trip to the dentist!  On our previous trip in May, we visited Montfield for Child Smile classes and for the dental nurses to apply fluoride varnish.  This time, we had full examinations, and the dentist was delighted to report that everyone has healthy teeth, and they are all brushing thoroughly.  Harris had a couple of x-rays in the practice then we went to Gilbert Bain for Luca to have a proper x-ray to check on a tooth yet to appear.  Freyja joined us after dinner for a trip to Magnos for ice-cream (some of us were defeated by two scoops as they were colossal).  Back at the flat, we watched a movie.

Wednesday

We had a relaxing start to the day with a visit to the library – it was very peaceful! Afterwards, we visited Scalloway Museum.  The children spent most of their time in the children’s area, playing with the castle and Viking toys.  Outside, Heidi met Heidi the Shetland pony!

After lunch we spent the afternoon at Hamnavoe Primary (Harris and Heidi’s new school after October).  Mrs Robertson, the head teacher, met us in the playground and showed us around and introduced us to the pupils. They have climbing frames, a tree garden, some hens and new swings. The children played until the end of lunchbreak then Heidi and Ander joined the P1/2 class, and Harris and Luca joined the P5/6 class.  Afterwards, we went to Harry’s toy shop to spend our pocket money then in the evening, Freyja, Luca and Harris went to the pool for ‘free’ swim. Heidi and Ander watched a movie and relaxed at the flat.

Thursday

The children spent the morning at Hamnavoe Primary and joined the literacy and maths lessons followed by break. Then it was back to the flat for lunch before our final swimming lesson.  As the flights were cancelled, we had a relaxing evening before heading home on Friday morning.  It was a fantastic school trip all round with happy, tired children (and adults)! I am really going to miss school trips – it is one of my favourite things about this job!

We have been learning about soluble substances and dissolving this week by experimenting with different liquids and solids in water eg. oil, sugar, salt, chalk, sand, flour, soap, vinegar, etc. The children tried their hardest to mix the oil and water and were fascinated that they separated every time! We discussed density and are now keen to experiment with oil, soap and water next week! The rainbow skittles experiment was a favourite to watch!

We have introduced ERIC (everyone reading in class) time for 10 mins every day after break time. We recently received many old magazines and comics from Freyja, such as The Beano, The Week Junior and Nat Geographic Kids which our pupils are all currently enjoying. We ordered some new fictional books for our library too. This is a peaceful and enjoyable part of our daily routine.

The children created self-portraits showing their outer and inner selves:

Ander loves trees, his climbing frame, football, his iPad, love, Don dog, hot dogs, burgers and has shown his Shetland and Argentinian roots!  Harris has shown his love of Xbox, phonk music, spiders, the sea and orcas. He included his pet snake Thistle too!

Heidi loves her cats, trees, birds, orcas, rainbows, sunny days, the colour pink, her iPad and the big slide in the playground! Luca loves sharpening pencils, mushrooms, prawns, lobster, monkey bars, Lego, football and his Shetland and Argentinian roots!

P2 have enjoyed using the laptops to type up their news for the Fair Isle Times. They love using the clicker programme which reads back their sentences and also helps with spelling. P2 are also working hard on money this week, by practising counting up coins to make amounts up to 20p.

The children enjoyed creating a road and shops in the playground using chalk. They have worked together as a team with everyone involved in the game during break times.

On Wednesday the children spent time in the school garden with Pat. They pulled up some tatties and onions. We have so many onions that we decided to deliver some to Triona and Stewart and enjoyed the walk down and back, as the sun had come out!

The children love their Art sessions with Fiona! Last week they did a fantastic job creating light and dark comparison scapes. Following on from that, in class we learned about day and night and why daylight changes between winter and summer. We had fun using a globe and a torch to explore this concept, with each child picking a different part of the world to ‘live’ then we rotated the globe. Next, we moved the globe to the other side and discussed the difference. We also learned about nocturnal and diurnal animals.

This week in art, the children had so much fun ice-painting. They mixed colours on blocks of ice and using salt to increase the rate of melting in places. They enjoyed swirling and mixing their chosen colours.