museum | Tingwall Primary 4/5

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.

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 are ticking things off the scavenger hunt

Ashleigh looking at what was being projected onto the wall

The boys thought they would nip around and photo bomb

We had great fun!

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.