Totem poles

Do you like our totem pole? We made it in art. We looked at pictures of some Canadian totem poles and painted small ones first, then designed and made our big Orcadian totem pole.

Here are some of the paintings people made.

Keep checking the blog!

There's been so much going on this last week of term that it might take a while for Mrs MacNab to get all the information and photographs uploaded.

Coming soon ... blog entries about ...

• Our coastal food tasting and other news from the week

• The SPECTACULAR Class Assembly

• Our Canadian day - the Spirit Dancer canoe visiting school, getting a parcel from Outma Sqilx Cultural School and our Canadian party

• Digging up our time capsules

• Getting awards

• Some class members going out paddling in the Spirit Dancer canoe

It's been a very, very busy week!


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Orkney meets Canada

Molly's design was chosen to be painted onto the Spirit Dancer.  At the weekend Molly, Mrs MacNab and Mrs MacKenzie went out to Holm to paint the design onto the canoe.

Drawing the design on first.

Starting to add colour.

Councillor Andrew Drever came to help - his handy heat gun was very useful.

Doing the fine brush work on the beak.

Mrs MacNab and Mrs MacKenzie did some painting, but Molly did most of it herself. Well done, Molly!

Two and a half hours work later and we're finally finished. We only stopped for a short break for juice and chocolate brownies, which gave us the energy to continue.

The finished design.

Molly based her design on some Canadian artwork she had looked at showing an orca and an eagle. She decided a puffin and orca would be appropriate, so the design represents Orkney's link with Canada through the Spirit Dancer canoe as well as historic links and the link between our class and the Outma Sqilx Cultural School in Penticton, BC.

Here is a very proud Molly showing her design and the finished work. She can't wait to paddle in the Spirit Dancer beside her own design now!

This has been a very special experience for us and we've been really pleased and excited that we were allowed to paint a design onto the canoe to celebrate the links between Orkney and Canada. We think this is the first piece of artwork on the canoe that isn't Canadian!

Canoe artwork

In Art with Mrs MacNab we looked at photos of some of the artwork on the Spirit Dancer canoe. The Kwu'sukwna?qinx canoe also has designs painted on it and we've seen pictures of it. Some of the people from the Kwu'sukwna?qinx canoe family designed and painted artwork onto the Spirit Dancer canoe.

Mrs MacNab challenged us to design some artwork to go onto a canoe (our own canoe, if we had one). It was quite hard, because we were only allowed to use 4 colours. We had to think of typical Orkney wildlife - that bit was easy because we've been studying the wildlife of our coasts.

Here are some of our designs.

What would you draw?

The next day we had some very exciting news! Chris and Barbara Cooper, who own Spirit Dancer and are bringing it to school to let us see it next week, said we could paint a design onto the actual canoe!!! That means that wherever it travels in Canada or the world, it will have a bit of Orkney with it - and that bit of Orkney will have come from our class.

Mrs MacNab sent the designs to Chris and he picked which one would go on the canoe. Check back for another blog entry soon about the winner painting their design onto the canoe.