Fair Isle Primary School, Shetland

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!

We have all thoroughly enjoyed our action packed final week of term.  Tuesday evening was our very well attended Christmas Variety Performance.  Luca and Ander acted, sang, played their instruments and performed gymnastics ….the two shining stars of Fair Isle Primary!

On Wednesday, Eileen very kindly cooked Christmas Dinner for the children and all the staff.  Thank you for such a delicious feast Eileen.

Some much needed chill out time!

We also had our Christmas party on Wednesday.  Brodie, who will start nursery in February, threw himself enthusiastically into every game.  We were lucky to have Grace and Freyja, just home from High School joining us too.

Luca and Ander had just enough energy left at the end of the week for a final piece of work for the Fair Isle Times.

We would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has helped us this term and have a very Merry Christmas!

We have had a very busy week practising for our Christmas Variety Performance.  The music is in safe hands with help from our grandparents, Pat and Neil.  Fiona is helping us to do a short play set on foggy Fair Isle.  We are also learning new skills for our Harry Potter inspired creative gymnastics display.  Thank you to Hollie and Ythan for their technical help and encouragement. Look out for the video next week.

In art, we have constructed 3D planets with Fiona. Lucy has been making sure that we are keeping going with our daily mile and doing plenty of maths and literacy as well.  Following on from our workshop in Shetland Museum, we made notes and wrote detailed reports about Johnnie Notions.  We have both been thinking about connections in our maths. Enjoy the photos!

Music with Pat

3D Planet Art

Costumes ready for our Variety Performance!

Ander thinking hard!

Luca working on equivalent fractions.

Report writing…”Who was Johnnie Notions?”

Read the finished reports in this week’s Fair Isle Times.