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 2 - parcel & party

For the 2nd part of our Canadian Day we had a nice surprise. When we got back into school after break we found that a parcel had arrived from our link school, Outma Sqilx Cultural School in Penticton in the Okanagan Region of British Columbia. We were really excited!

We took turns taking things out of the parcel. There were lots of things and everyone got some hockey cards, a bookmark and a a flag to take home. The other things are staying in school so other people can see them. There's a toy black bear (there are black bears living near our link school) and some pictures of Penticton and the Okanagan Lakes.

They have a monster in the Okanagan Lake called Ogopopo. It looks a bit like Nessie, the Loch Ness monster from Scotland. We wonder if they're cousins?

There were lovely letters from the pupils too, telling us about what they do and about some of the wildlife they see.

They sent us a big Canadian flag, and small flags for everyone too.

We got the big maple leaf flag put up on the flagpole outside the school. It looked really good - especially with the Spirit Dancer Canadian canoe sitting there too!

Lim Limpt, Outma School!

Last thing in the afternoon Mrs MacNab had another Canadian surprise for us. We had a Candian party! We listened to some canoe family songs and videos and then we had ice cream, waffles and maple syrup (which came from Canada - there is even a maple leaf on the Canadian flag).

Yum yum!

After that, Mrs MacNab told us about the Kwu'sukwna?qinx Canoe Family and the giveaway they did when they left Orkney. They gave presents that were either useful or meant something special. Mrs MacNab played the Kwu'sukwna?qinx Giveaway song and we tried to join in with it, then we all got presents.

Do you think we liked them?

We LOVED our Canadian Day!

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?

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.

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.

Storytelling

We've been doing some storytelling for our link school in Canada.  We've now got 3 stories put onto our wiki - we hope other people will listen to them too, and maybe even leave comments for us here.
You can find the link to the wiki in "Class 3/4's Links" on the right of this blog, or click here to be taken direct to the Orkney storytelling page.

We hope you enjoy listening to our stories.
 

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?

International Education in our class.

We made a display about international education in our class.

We made a slideshow about our display.

Our box has arrived in Canada!

Our box has arrived in our link school in the Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada. The pupils have opened it and they liked all the things inside it. They left a message for us on our blog here.

They sent us some letters too and we enjoyed reading them. We're hoping to reply to them soon. We found out that they like a lot of the same things as us, but the wildlife they see is very different. They have bears and rattlesnakes!

Did you know they're getting a new school built? We saw photos of the place where the new school will be built. There's wild horses there just now.