Children's Work P5 - P7
2008-2009

Last updated: Thursday, December 10, 2009 9:42 PM

View a slide show of our Open Day
On  the afternoon of 18th December 2009 we all had such fun
showing off our work to the children in Lochmaddy School and our own school secondary department.
We stayed in school for our tea, and then dressed up again in our lovely costumes ready to perform for our parents. We took them round all the displays, classrooms and corridors and got them involved in a lot of different activities. This was kindly videoed for us by Mrs MA Macdonald. We hope you enjoy a small selection of the many photos taken to capture our enjoyment and enthusiasm!

The Victorians

This term room 7 has been studying the Victorian way of life. It was extremely different from our modern way of life. For example sometimes the children had to work at the young age of 4. These were the sort of jobs that children had, Chimney Sweeps, working on the farm, coal miners, workers in factories, orderly boys, messenger boys, knocker upperers and the most interesting job of all was pickpockets. Pickpockets were well off jobs for children. They had to go out into the streets and steal things out of innocent people’s pockets. They got paid more than the rest of the children because the job was very risky.

This is a quote from Tony Robinson’s book on The Worst Children Jobs in History from page 92, “All children in factories worked ridiculously long hours. Some of them were so called ‘apprentices’, who slept in dormitories at the factory, but even if they lived with their parents they would hardly ever see them.

In our opinion Chimney sweeps had the worst job of all. Children had to climb up chimneys and clean them. Sometimes the chimneys were only 30 centimeters wide! Only small and skinny children were hired for this horrific job. They were usually paid a very little amount so the children could only have three baths a year, in spring, autumn and Christmas. They would come down the chimneys with bleeding elbows and knees and also all covered in soot. Small boys sometimes started working at the age of four at wealthy peoples` houses.

Coal mining children were exhausted, tired and hungry children. It wasn’t just dark and rat infested in the mines, accidents and disasters were common: fires could break out, roofs collapse and there were risks of poisonous gases and flooding. There were many jobs for children in coal mines. There were trappers, hurriers and the miners themselves. The Trappers sat in a tiny dug out hole and opened and closed doors to let air in. Hurriers were the children who pushed heavy cartfulls of coal up to the surface. The actual miners searched for coal with a pick.

There were many changing technologies in the Victorian times: they were big fans of engineering. The steam engine was invented in 1781 (just before Victorian times) by a man called James Watt. The Victorians worked on the steam engine over the years. They improved it extremely. The steam- powered Victorian factories were usually built in towns. The factory engines needed fuel to heat up water to make steam. Local coalfields provided the factories with coal to burn as fuel. Towns like Leeds became very smoky because of the many factories that were built during the Victorian period. These industrial towns grew very quickly. For example, Manchester’s population was 75,000 in 1801. By 1851, this had grown to 303,000.

Our project has allowed us to work on our own, in pairs and in groups. We are able to talk about issues arising as well as researching and displaying our work. We have all been responsible for certain areas of study and have made short presentations to the class. We still have lots of work to do before the end of the term…. We hope to impress our families on our open night… Thursday 18th December…… 6:30pm. 

A report by Calum MacRitchie and Craig Erskine P7     4 Dec 2008

Fairtrade

On Monday 17th November, Room 7 pupils hosted a “Fairtrade” whole school assembly.  Primary 7 pupils introduced the topic, followed by 3 power point presentations by Laurence Donkers, Fazel Froughi and Hannah Hocine.   As part of their classroom enterprise, the P4-7 pupils  has held several Fairtrade  Tuck Shops.  Profits were used to purchase a class football.  Further profit was made and another football was purchased   for the secondary along with  two other footballs for Room 1and Room 5.These were presented by Calum and Craig after the power point presentations.  The assembly closed with further presentations of swimming awards to
Katlyn P6, Craig P7, Hannah P7, Andrew P7 and Fazel P7.

Click on Pr5-7 to see what was happening in our class last year.