News from the last week

This blog entry is about the more 'everyday' things that happened in the last week. There will be special blog entries about the rest of the week's events too.

Here we are about to start our coastal food tasting. We've had a food tasting for every topic so we had to have one for the coast too. We were hoping for salmon but we got seaweed instead. Most people didn't like it, though the seaweed biscuits and rice crackers were ok. Only Ashleigh and Ronan liked the seaweed (laverbread from Wales).

We spent a bit of time exploring what was still in the marine chest, before we had to pack it all away to send back to Scottish Netural Heritage for another class to use next.

We finished making our PowerPoint slideshows about the biodiversity of Orkney's coasts, ready to show them at the class assembly. Everyone did very well with making the PowerPoints. Some of the P4s even managed to add sounds and make them run automatically! If you need lessons in how to make a colourful slideshow, just ask P3/4!

 

It was the last week of the gardening club. Can you guess what we were going to be doing?

We did a review of the year. We said what we had liked most, what we had found easy, what we hadn't enjoyed as much and what we had found difficult.

Somehow, we still found time to do PE. We had fun playing lots of different games.

We went to watch the final of Glaitness has got Talent! We were very proud of the people from our class who had got to the final. It isn't easy to perform in front of the whole school,but they were great!

The P7 band, Unlimited, won the show. The played 'Sweet Home Alabama' and sounded very professional. They really got the audience going. 

Well done, everyone.

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.

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.

Our Canadian orcas

We've been painting Canadian style orcas in art. We hope you like them.



Do you know why we're doing Canadian style art?

It's because our link school is in Canada. They're the Outma Sqilx Cultural School in Penticton in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. We wonder if they've seen orcas?

Our land art

Last week we looked at some land art made by Richard Shilling. We're hoping to make our own land art when we do some beach visits next term, but the snow inspired some of the girls and they spent break time making their own land art, and lunchtime repairing it!

Team work.

Reaching high to put the final pieces on.

Look at it - isn't it high?

"It's even higher than Mrs MacNab".

The rest of the class went out to see it in the afternoon when we went out to look at how our shadows had changed.

"It's like an art gallery in here at the minute"

In Art of the Week on Friday afternoon as looked at 'land art'. All the pictures we looked at were of things made by a man called Richard Shilling.

Some people thought at first that it wasn't art because it was photographs and not "created by a hand" but the rest of the pupils persuaded them that it was art.

We liked them and thought it would be fun to make our own land art. Mrs MacNab said maybe we could make some when we go to the beach next term.

We thought some of the things must have been very difficult to make and must have taken hours!

Myth masks

We spent quite a few weeks last term working on making myth masks in small groups. We had to be able to work in a group with other people which some people found very difficult at first,l but everyone got much better at it the more we did.

First we had to draw some designs for the masks.

Then we started to draw out the masks and stick cardboard, bubble wrap and rolled up newspaper on them - do you think they look good?

Then we built up papier mache ...

... we painted them ...

... and then used darker colours of paint to make them look better.

Last we used things like feathers, wool, fur and even goats' hair to  add decoration to them.

Here are the finished masks. We're going to use them in drama next term.

Do you know who they all are?