The start of a new year has seen us full of celebration! January at Sound ELC and Primary is an exciting time as we prepare for, and celebrate the festival of Up Helly Aa. Through our play, and during some staff led activities, we have been given opportunities to learn some facts about Vikings and how Up Helly Aa is celebrated.

We have listened to stories about Viking characters, looked at magazines from past Up Helly Aa celebrations, learned some words to sing along to the Galley Song and shared an Up Helly Aa Bookbug session with Mrs Hutcheson. Through engaging with songs, stories and books in these ways we learn that books have meaning and can link text to real life contexts.

Books are great for stimulating different types of role play too. We have taken part in lots of Viking imaginary play in our very own galley and through construction and dressing up. Taking part in play like this develops our communication skills in listening, talking, explaining and describing and our collaborative skills as we discuss our play and create different scenarios together. Our imaginary play extended to the water tray and junk modelling where we played with boats in water and some of us built our own.

 

Our teachers noticed our creativity in junk modelling and so helped us create shields, axes and Vikings using art and craft resources, challenging us to explore shape, line and colour as well as develop our scissor skills.

We were excited to be visited by the Junior Up Helly Aa squad and were able to show off some of our creations and sing the Up Helly Aa songs with them. A big adult Viking came to say hello too. We were interested in his costume, his shield and axe. We got to hold some shields and try on a Viking helmet that Mrs Smith kindly brought in. They were very heavy! Vikings must have been strong.

We were also very lucky that we got a trip to see the real long ship in the Galley shed. What a wonderful morning we had. We learned more about Up Helly Aa by watching a video and more about how the long ship was built. Going on trips helps us learn about staying safe when using transport and develops our awareness of our local community too.

What an exciting time January has been.