Category Archives: Shetland

sports day

On Monday the 13th of June we had sports day. We were really lucky for such a nice day. 1st was the 30m sprint for primary 4-7 then. The 20m sprint for primary 1-3  then the next race was the sack race. The next race was the tattie race. After that race was the 3 legged race for primary 4-7, primary 1-3 did the quoit race. Then it was the 3 lap race. Then if you wanted you could do the 8 lap race after that it was the little ones race then the adults race. After that we had a picnic lunch outside in Gotties garding.

Dogs Against Drugs

Today Michael Coutts came into school to talk to us about dogs against drugs.

There are 2 dog handlers in Shetland and they have 3 drugs dogs between them.

Did you know that dogs have 30x better smell than humans? Elephants have even better smell but they are more difficult to get in the police van. :’) Bees also have better smell.

The dogs and their handlers have to go south every year for assessments.

We got keyrings that had the website on it. Here is a link to the Dogs against drugs website if you want to have a look at the dogs in Shetland,  although Thor isn’t on this one : http://www.dogsagainstdrugs.co.uk/the-dogs

Thor is their newest dog, he’s still training. We got to meet him, he was lovely. He got really excited when he saw Magnus kicking the ball around at break time. He just wanted to play too! 🙂

 

Nesting and Girlsta Jarl Squad visits Tingwall

We all gathered down at the Tingwall hall after dinner. The Jarl squad were a little late coming but we didn’t mind as it was exciting waiting for them.  There were pupils from our school in the jarl squad so it must have been very exciting for them. We were excited to see them and what they would be wearing. The Jarl Squad came in and sang the Up Helly Aa song followed by their own song. We game the Jarl and his squad 3 cheers and presented them with a gift. They gave the school a gift of a copy of their shields and each pupil in the school got a badge with the design of their shield on it. It was very nice of them. After this we got to go mingle with the Vikings and try on their helmets and hold their axes and shields. It was good fun! We had a great afternoon!

Granny Brae

Colvin’s granny (Jenny Murray) came in to talk to us and the primary 2/3s this morning about an axe head that Colvin found in Yell on the beach in Gutcher. This was used about 5000 years ago when the first Shetlanders were here. They used sheep guts to attach the stone to the wooden handle.The used ash and sand on a bit of leather to polish stones.

She talked about the houses that they had in the stone age. They were round, small and made of stones.

She allowed us to ask her questions at the end and tell her of our findings. It was really interesting and we enjoyed her visiting our class.

Here is a picture of Colvin and the axe head:

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These are a few photos that Miss Nicholson took. You can see what the axe would have looked like (a Whalsay man made a replica for the museum – with real sheep guts!) You can also see some of the other axe heads that have been found and used thousands of years ago. They were used for a number of different things: killing animals, chopping down trees (Yes Shetland used to have lots of trees and when they were building the Gas Plant they found roots of trees that would have been a forest!)

Shetland Museum

After Kirsty told us about James Robertson and we looked around the exhibition we got to try drawing a self portrait like James Robertson’s one.

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He had a globe painted with him to show he was educated and we think it also shows that he mapped around the world.

 

We had to think about what we would want the world to know about us. A lot of the boys drew something to do with football or computer games. There were also sports like, hockey and swimming, musical instruments and things we enjoy doing now or would like to do when we are older. We worked really hard on our portraits and coloured them in, some of us did not get them finished before we had our break so Miss Nicholson let us finish them once we had our snack. After our break we got to have a look around the museum which was great as our topic is Shetland. We had to complete a scavenger hunt. We split into 3 groups and worked together to find everything as well as having a look at everything in the museum.

We had great fun!

Trip to the museum to learn about James Robertson

Today we went to the Shetland museum to look at the exhibition on James Robertson. He is the Shetlander who put Jamaica on the map. He was the youngest boy of 10 children. He lived in a croft house in Gossabrough, Yell. His family weren’t rich but they weren’t poor. He was very clever. He made several maps of Jamaica and they are really good for the time they were made considering he doesn’t have the technology we have now. After he made the map of Jamaica he went to London and got a painting made of himself as well as buying lots of nice things since he was rich. He wasn’t nice to his nieces and nephews. It took him 12 years to make the map of Aberdeenshire.  He went on trial because the people who asked for the map of Aberdeenshire told him his map was wrong but he had worked on it for 12 years so it would have been right at the time he started. He only had 3 years to make it so they thought they shouldn’t have to pay him, he thought he should be paid for all his work. So they took it to court. He died before his trial so we don’t know who would have won. He died aged 74.

Our topic

Our topic this term is Shetland. Yesterday in Topic Miss Nicholson gave us each a map of shetland and we had to write down where all the places were. We found a lot of places. We went over this as a class to see if we were right. We were learning about Fair Isle knitting/patterns and Miss Nicholson took in lots of Fair Isle jumpers which we got to try on. (they were a bit big though) We also got to see a jumper board which is what people dry Fair Isle  jumpers on to keep their shape. After that we got to design our own jumpers and we got to listen to Shetland music whilst we did this.