Spirit Dancer

After the Spirit Dancer came to Glaitness for us to learn more about it (you can read about that here), some people were very keen to go out paddling in her. Over a quarter of the class, and both the teachers, went out paddling with the Canadians in Spirit Dancer. It was great fun!

Canadian Day part 1 - Pipes & salutes in the Spirit Dancer

For the first part of our Canadian Day the Spirit Dancer Canadian canoe came to school to visit us. Some Candians - Chris, Barbara and Bob - came too to tell us all about it. It's 42 feet long - that's nearly 13 metres long!

We all climbed in and were given paddles to hold.

Chris showed us how we would paddle the canoe - and also how to do a salute.

Mrs MacNab was in the skipper's seat.

James from P7 came out and played the pipes for us. We really enjoyed it - and so did the Canadians!

Here's a video of James entertaining us.

Lots of other classes came out to watch and enjoy the music. We showed them how to salute. We were very proud that we were the only class who were allowed to sit in the canoe because of our special link with Canada.

We think some people could happily have stayed in Spirit Dancer all day ...

... but we eventually went inside and asked Chris some questions about canoeing.

Lots of people are hoping to go paddling in the Spirit Dancer in the evening. Will you go?

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.

Almost the end of term...

We can't believe it's almost the end of the school year already. We'll soon be in P4/5! We met our new teacher this week - it was very exciting because she took us to see some chicks in her classroom. We saw one hatching, and another 2 that were eating food. They were cute.

We're still rehearsing hard for the class assembly.

We've been finding out about how different creatures develop.  We compared orcas, grey seals, bottlenose dolphins and humans.

Did you know that orca calves drink 230 litres of milk a day? We don't think even Reid could manage that!

Did you know that puffins can start having babies when they're only 3 years old?

Did you know that grey seals pups are left to look after themselves when they are only 3 weeks old?

Did you know that female orcas can live to 90 years old?

Did you know that a newborn orca calf puts on weight at rate of 4kg per hour (that’s about 10 tins of baked beans!). By the time a seal pup is 3-4 weeks old it will weigh about 3 times what it weighed when it was born. A human baby will take about a year to weigh about 3 times wat it weighed when it was born.

We found it really interesting that creatures all developed at different rates.

It was exciting at the start of the week because we received some PowerPoints from our link school in Canada. The pupils from Outma Sqilx Cultural School made them to teach us some of their language. It looked really funny and has different letters to English - we had no idea how to say the words but they had added sound files so we could hear them speaking too. Then at the end they gave all the translations.

 

Lim limpt, Outma school!

We've all learned how to say "We are Okanagan" in the Syilx language. Ask any of the pupils and they will teach you too.

We've got some more exciting news about our link with Canada - the Canadian Spirit Dancer canoe is coming to Glaitness to visit us next week. We had a competition to design a piece of artwork to go on the canoe, so that a piece of Orkney will go with the canoe wherever it goes in the world! We're going to paint it on to the canoe soon and will show you more then.

We had fun with parachute games in PE.

Here's the cat trying to catch the mice...

On Friday it was the auditions for "Glaitness Has Got Talent". It was VERY scary performing in front of the whole school. We are very proud that 2 people from our class got through to the final. There are only 8 people in the final, so they did very well. Well done Dani and Kaitlyn!

The final will be next week, so it looks like the last week of term will be another busy and exciting one!

Wonderful Walliwall - part 2

We had a great time at Walliwall. We did canoeing and lots of team challenges. Can you guess what the best bit was? You'll never guess......


Mrs MacNab couldn't guess either. It was when Neil (one of the instructors) put his hat behind his ears! It was so funny - he looked like an elf!

Here we are ready for canoeing. We wonder if the pupils in our link school have been out in a canoe or if they have to wait until they are old enough to join the canoe family?

We practised maths because we played 'What's the Time, Mr Wolf?'  It was really fun.

We had to collect coathanger fish.

No, she didn't fall in....

..... everyone had to put their head in the water to say hello to the fish.

This challenge was where we had to get a ball to go through the pipes without dropping it. It was hard!

We had to get the whole team across the lava and water (with crocodiles in it) using 5 crates and 2 planks of wood. Nobody got eaten by the crocodiles.

Here we are carrying the canoe over obstacles. We had to work together to manage it.

More challenges.

Building a shelter that had to be waterproof and windproof. How would you build yours?

Lunchtime - I think we've earned it....

This is the metal bar challenge - we had to get the metal bar down to the ground. It sounds easy but everyone's fingers had to be touching it the whole time. We had to work very well as a team to make it work. Mrs MacNab tried it when the teachers went to Walliwall - she thought it was difficult.

Here's a slideshow of all the photos from Walliwall. It's quite long!