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?

Digging up our time capsule

Way back on the 1st day of the 1st term in August, we made time capsules. You can read about it here.  This week it was time to dig them up!

Mrs MacNab tricked us - she wrote on the daily plan 'problem solving' and made us think we were doing maths! She gave us clues and told us we had to work together to solve the problem. When we realised it would lead us to the time capsule we got excited. Mrs MacNab said the noise level in the room kept getting higher and higher as we kept getting more and more excited!

Some people tried to get everyone to work together but it was difficult at first as everyone kept shouting out where they thought the time capsule was. Eventually the Mollys worked out how to solve some of the clues and James and Amy got people to take turns, and we quickly solved all the clues.

We headed out to the courtyard  and Kaitlyn showed us what pansies looked like. It didn't take us long to find them!

Then we had to solve another problem - how to dig up the time capsule without making a huge mess and killing the plants. Luckily the people in the gardening club knew where things were stored so we had the right equipment.

Back in the classroom we chose someone to open the parcel and then we all got our own time capsules to open.

It was very exciting. We couldn't believe how much we had changed! Even our writing had changed - at the start of P3/4 we didn't do joined writing and some people found it very hard to read their own writing from the start of the year.

Everyone had grown too! Look at how much taller some of us now - and how much bigger our hands and feet are.

Here's a short video of us digging up and opening the time capsules.

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.