John Rae's Fiddle

As part of our John Rae week, Mark Shiner (Stella's Dad!), came into school to talk to us about John Rae's fiddle.  He fixed it up and made it work again after over 100 years!  It was very interesting and we got to hear a clip of the fiddle being played.  We found out that it had strings made out of 'guts' and that's why it sounded a little bit different to the fiddles we listen to today!

John Rae Week continues...

Today we have been learning lots about John Rae and his life!  This morning we had a visit from Sheila Garson who told us all about John Rae when he was a peedie boy.  We learned that his life was very different from ours and that he loved to be outside doing things.  He had a boat and he could hunt and shoot things from when he was very young.  We saw some pictures of him from a book.  It was great to hear all about his early life.

In the afternoon we had a visit from Tom Muir who told us all about John Rae's life as an explorer.  We found out that he was a qualified surgeon by the time he was 19 and that he went on many expeditions.  We also learned that he know how to make houses out of snow and that on one expedition he used tin plates as oars on his boat as they didn't have any!  It was very interesting to hear all about his adventures in a different country. 

We are looking forward to the rest of John Rae week and all the activities that are planned!

John Rae Week Begins...

We kicked off John Rae week with a visit to Stromness Museum to have a look around the exhibition about John Rae's life.  We got to see lots of things that he used and things that he owned and was interested in.  We also really enjoyed having a look around the rest of the museum! On our way there we stopped at the Statue of John Rae.  We saw that he was carrying a gun and a knife for hunting.  We are looking forward to finding out lots more about his life and why he is important to Orkney.

All Things Owl!

Last Wednesday we had a visit from RSPB Field Teacher Amy Malcolm.  She came to tell us all about animals that come out at night - nocturnal animals.  We learned about different kinds of nocturnal animals and how they use their senses to help them find their way around in the dark.  We were most interested in Owls and Amy took in some owl pellets to dissect.  We found out that Owl eat their food whole and then cough up the bones and fur in a pellet.  We used cocktail sticks to dissect the pellets and we took out all the little bones.  It was a little bit yucky but once we started to find all the bones we got very excited.  We all found loads of bones in our little pellets and we got a sheet to see if we could find out what animal the bones were from.  It was lots of fun and we really enjoyed being bone detectives!  We also got to make clay owls which we are going to decorate and take home with us before the holidays.  Here are some pictures of us hard at the dissecting!  Don't look too closely if you are squeamish! 

Magical Moondust!

In writing last week we were learning about creating a setting for our stories.  We decided to set our story on the moon but we had a little problem - none of us know exactly what the moon is like!  We looked at pictures, listened to some moon music and we also played with some moon dust to make craters like the surface of the moon!  Some of us even made copies of Neil Armstrong's footprints!  We had lots of fun and it gave us some really good ideas for our writing although we only just started our stories - we are going to finish them off this week and then Miss Shearer will put them on the Blog! Until then here are some photos of us seeing what moon dust is like!

 

Planning, doing and reviewing!

We had our second week of plan do review last week and it was a big success!  We all planned something to do and then we used all the different materials in the classroom to help us do and create it!  Some people made small things and some people made big things!  We are still working on most of the things so we will post photos of them when they are finished in our plan do review display but until then here are some photos of works in progress!

Dramatic Stars and Planets.

Last week in Drama we were doing lots of pretending!  We were pretending to be the sun, moon and earth and worked together to make a dance showing how they move around each other.  We used a starry piece of music to help us.  We all came up with some different moves in our groups and they were really good!  We are going to work on them this week and make them a little bit longer and maybe even introduce some other stars or planets!  You can see us spinning around in the photos.  Can you work out who is the moon, sun and earth?