Description:

Our final day of Islay involved a full day at Port Ellen Primary School on the south end of the island, close to some of the more famous distilleries. We started the day with the P1-3 class, talking about the Earth, Sun and Moon system, which reinforces ideas about day & night, seasons and lunar phases. We then ran the Stars and Constellations module with the P4-6 age groups, which once again had pupils making their own planispheres for future use. We finished the morning with our interactive ‘Nature of Light’ session, which introduced the P4-7 pupils to the ideas of types of light that their eyes cannot see.

After lunch, we ran our ‘Robotic Telescope’ module with the P6-7 pupils, which had them conducting basic investigations on real astronomical images. We finished the day with the whole school in the hall learning about Space Exploration. As we had a couple of hours until our ferry departed, we had agreed to run a small community event after the school day in which we took a quick look at the solar system and also at what was in the night sky around that time of year. We are delighted that over 30 members of the local community chose to join us. It was then time to say our farewells and head to the ferry for our trip back to the mainland and home.