Steel Pans

As an end of year treat, we went to up to Papdale School to learn to play the steel pans today.  It was very noisy and so much fun!

 

 

There were bass, tenor bass, seconds, guitar and tenor pans.  It was harder than we first thought but we started to get the hang of it.  We were learning to play The Banana Boat Song which is a traditional song from Jamaica.  It was great to learn a bit about a musical culture belonging to some of the teams that will be competing in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

 

I will try to upload the video clip soon.

 

Take a look back at the Sports Day post as I have added more photographs.



Wideford Hill

 

Today we 'finished' our trip to Wideford Hill by going up in the minibus to see the view.

Wow! We could see the mountains in Scotland, Westray, Auskerry, Deerness South Ronaldsay and everything in between. We had a really good view of Kirkwall and saw how the sea would have come into where our school is now back in the time of the Vikings. We did our 'keep warm' dance and collected words for a word cloud.

 

Mission Explore challenges -  achieved!

Mission Explore at Muddisdale and Wideford

We continued our John Muir Mission Explore challenges at Muddisdale and Wideford.

This time James won the 'plastic-free lunch' challenge - well done!

 

Yum! NO plastic!

We started our day with a few Woodland Workout activities amongst the sycamore trees - it was great fun and a good warm-up. Next we had a look at the biodiversity in the first two habitats - amongst the trees and the grassland around the trees. Further on we stopped to micro-explore the stone walls - a few spiders in there! We noticed the patch of land squeezed between the golf-course, the Muddisdale plantation and the farmland - this is probably as close as we can get to seeing what the landscape looked like before people turned it into farmland.

Micro-exploring the cracks!
Can you see the difference between the old and the more recently built wall?

We had a look at the third habitat- farmland.

There was much less biodiversity in the farmed fields than on the verges of the path.

 

Next challenge was to count 1000 steps - we did it! and when we completed the challenge we had gone a LONG WAY!

Unfortunately the top of the hill was covered in cloud to there was no view to enjoy but we did get windswept and we did stand on top of a high place. We had a short look at the habitat on the hill and had our lunch.

 

On the way down we managed to Pick Up Three Pieces (our own challenge) and then we arrived back at sunny Muddisdale.

Time for a game which involved trying to memorise collections of natural objects...
 and a game of 'Ants'.

 

Now we can see the top of the hill!

What's missing?

We love the 'ants' game!

 

We found that there was much more biodiversity than we expected!

 

Sports Day 2014

The Corse team captains with the trophy.

 

This year Corse won the most points at Sports Day,

but well done everyone for taking part and trying hard.

What part of the day did P5 enjoy the most?

 

 

 

Read our comments below...

Canoeing at The Peedie Sea

 

We had a brilliant session in canoes at The Peedie Sea for our outdoor activity day. We split into two groups and Group A went across to paddle in the morning, Group B in the afternoon. After getting to grips with the kit and equipment Group A helped portage the canoes and put two boats together .to create a really stable craft. Each group practised paddle strokes and turning and then we played a few games. Unsure if we were pirates or Vikings the groups competed hard and worked as teams to pick up floating balls and 'steal' the treasure from the other boat to win. We also had a leisurely 'sail' using a tarp and a kayak paddle - very relaxing... Group B helped tidy up and portaged the canoes back to the trailer at the end.

We had a great time and hope we can get out and use canoes on the Peedie Sea more often!

We will add our own comments below so you can see what we thought...

 

Thank you Ron, Mrs Humphries and Mrs Duncan.