Stromness museum

On Wednesday 26th September we went to Stromness to search for evidence about the Hudson Bay Company and John Rae. We started our search by looking for plaques on buildings on the street. We found buildings that had been recruitment offices for the Hudson Bay Company and one that was a hospital for sailors coming home with scurvy.

We had a look in Logins well where the ships used to stock up with water before going on their expeditions.

Outside the museum

searching for evidence

John Rae's fiddle

Some moccasins with intricate Indian beadwork 

The scrimshaw on these tusks and teeth is amazing!

Inuit dog sleigh and reindeer - made from bone or ivory

We were particularly interested in the hunting weapons.

Eating our lunch

Kim Foden

On Wednesday 19th we had a very busy day again. At first break we held a bake sale outside our classroom. It was a very successful event and raised over £104 which will go towards the cost of some of our class trips. A huge thank you to everyone for all their hard work and  donations of baking.

In the afternoon we invited Kim Foden in to talk to us about the Hudson Bay company and her family links with the Cree Indians - a First Nations tribe in Canada.
She brought in some Hudson Bay and First Nations goods to show us and had a slide show with pictures of Canada and her relatives. 

Some of the items Kim showed us.

A beaver fur and the Hudson Bay flag.

She also showed us how to set up a tipi and has let us borrow her model tipi so that we can practise setting it up ourselves.

Science Festival visitors

We have had a very busy week with visitors from the Science Festival coming in to school to speak to us.
On Tuesday we were lucky enough to meet Dr Maria Pia Casarini Wadhams from Fermo in Italy.She is the director of a Polar Museum and has a special interest in Polar explorers. She talked to us about our own explorer, John Rae and about how she hopes to help celebrate his bicentenary next year. She has visited Orkney for the Science festival many times and has a great enthusiasm for our Islands. Here is a link to the website for her museum. Unless you understand Italian though you may want to use the translated version!
http://www.museopolare.it/

Our second visitor, Alison McLure, is the National Officer (Scotland)of the Institute of Physics and she has led expeditions to do scientific research in the Arctic and was able to tell us what it is like to live with such cold temperatures and basic resources. She had photographs of spectacular scenery from Svalbard where she was based. It was interesting to hear how they travelled over the snow, cooked their food and slept in tents. The favourite part for everyone seemed to be about how they kept themselves safe from polar bears by setting up a trip wire that triggers a flare to create light and noise and scare the bear away.

We asked questions about how they coped with ordinary things like the toilet and not being able to have a bath or shower. She made it all sound so interesting that some of us think we would like to go on an expedition in a few years. You need to be at least 17 to join.

Here is a link to the IOP Scotland site.

  http://iopscotland.org/ 

Both visitors were impressed with the listening skills displayed and enjoyed their visits very much.

Science Festival

On Friday 7th September we had the opportunity to go to Stromness Academy to listen to Jane Goodall talk about her life.

She has spent a large part of her life in Africa studying chimpanzees and has discovered a great deal of interesting information about them. She started her talk by greeting us in chimp language and asking us to repeat it back. She had a lot of stories to tell about particular chimps that she has worked with. She has set up a scheme called Roots & Shoots which provides young people with the knowledge, tools and hopeful inspiration to improve the environment and the quality of life for people and animals.

We all listened really well and agreed that we would like to become involved in some way later on in this session.

You can visit the Roots and Shoots website using the link below
http://www.rootsandshoots.org/

Jane Goodall's website can be found at:

http://www.janegoodall.org/

Drama

Mr Giles has been helping us to set up family groups for drama. We have chosen characters and roles for our family members and given the families traditional Orkney names. 

We have been investigating the jobs and chores various family members would have had 200 years ago on a traditional Orkney farm.
When we go on our visit to Corrigal farm museum we will 'work' in our family groups and get some idea of what it was really like. 
Our costumes are almost ready and next week we will have our family photographs taken. We have learned that we must look serious and try not to smile too much! 

We did a great job of pretending to walk solemnly into church and wait quietly for the minister. It doesn't seem like people had much time for fun in those days.

Tag rugby

We have had 2 sessions of our Tag rugby practice so far this term and are polishing our skills to be ready for the first Tag festival later in the month.
Our coach, Liam, is doing a great job of keeping us on the move and refereeing the games.

Week 2 was very windy! We had to run after the tags quite a lot and the marker cones were very mobile! Thank goodness for the fences!