Description:
Our third and final trip to the Isle of Arran took one of our team to Shiskine Primary School on the west coast of the island. Being a small school with just two class groups (P1-4 and P5-7), we were able to run different sessions for each. We started the day with our ‘Solar System’ workshop for the younger group, but with the wide age range, the pupils were guided through the process of making scale planet models. We then ran the ‘Stars and Constellations’ session with the older class, which involved making a planisphere to take home. The two classes then joined up for the ‘Nature of Light’ session, which took us up to lunchtime.

After lunch, we got the laptops out and had the older P5-7 class hunting for asteroids in real telescope data. For this we use images from our own robotic telescope in the Canary Islands, one of whose roles is to monitor asteroid movements. The day ended with our ‘Space Exploration’ talk to the whole school, before pupils made their way home in the driving rain. Time to pack up, but with only one lunchtime ferry out of the northerly terminal each day, we had the following morning to explore before making our way home over the sea.