Tag Archives: Kilmodan

Workshop: Mesolithic and Neolithic Life in Glen

October 2, 2013NewsAlana Mathers, Alison Sykora, All Our Stories, Argyll, Cowal, Food, Foraging, Forest, Forest School, Gatherer, Glen, Glen of the Red River, Glendaruel, Heritage Lottery Fund, History, Hunter, Kilmodan, Kilmodan Primary School, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Outdoors, Primary School, pupils, Sadie Dixon-Spain, Susan Gaffney, Timeline, Weaving, websiteAlana Mathers

Date: [Morning] Wednesday 2^nd of October 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School’s Forest School, Glendaruel

Workshop: Mesolithic and Neolithic Life in the Glen

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

Guests: Susan Gaffney and Alison Sykora

The aim of this exercise was to encourage the pupils of Kilmodan Primary to use their imaginations and experience what life would have been like in Mesolithic and Neolithic Glendaruel. This is where the timeline the pupils created begins, and by bringing to life this era, it allowed the children to have a realistic knowledge of how life has evolved, how the Glen has changed, and of course, aspects of life in the Glen which have remained from the Early Settlers.

We took part in ‘Forest School’, a weekly excursion to an allocated outdoor classroom the pupils undertake each week. Sadie and Alana from The Walking Youth Theatre were accompanied by weaver Susan Gaffney, and professional chef Alison Sykora, who kindly shared their expertise to give the pupils hands-on experience of Meso & Neo-lithic life.

Susan taught the pupils how to weave plates and bowls, the way our Early Settling descendants would have done so in the very beginning of life in the Glen. This fantastic hands-on experience was enjoyed by all, and our pupils made some expertly designed serving dishes, just in time for a Mesolithic feast!

Alison cooked up a Mesolithic feast, with a little help from our hardy pupils! Food foraging brought to our attention the vast variety of ingredients that lie in the Glen, and by using traditional methods as far as possible, our pupils had a real-life Hunter Gatherer experience! From fruit to fish, vegetables to seaweed, an extraordinary insight into the feasting habits of 10,000 years ago brought the history of the Red River to life in a very exciting way!

Draft pictures for the Kilmodan Primary School Page

September 11, 2013NewsAll Our Stories, Kilmodan, P2, Primary School, SketchesCharles Dixon-Spain

Archie and Callum spent the afternoon producing fabulous sketches of the school from the outside for the school page. As P2s their brief was to give us an idea of what the school looks like. Their angular drawings certainly give a great idea of the mid-70s architecture!

Picture Research and Filling in the Blanks

September 11, 2013NewsAll Our Stories, development, Kilmodan, narrative, websiteCharles

Today the pupils of Kilmodan are going to have a session with Charles Dixon-Spain on picture research and expanding the information on the website. We’ll be defining what pictures we want and what copy is needed. Hopefully the website will be even more colourful when we finish.

Workshop: New Term, New Website!

August 21, 2013NewsAlana Mathers, All Our Stories, Argyll, Beginning, Cowal, Early Settlers, Forest, Glen, Glen of the Red River, Glendaruel, Heritage Lottery Fund, History, Kilmodan, Kilmodan Primary School, Mesolithic, Neolithic, pupils, Sadie Dixon-Spain, Timeline, websiteAlana Mathers

Date: Wednesday 21^st of August 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School

Workshop: New Term, New Website: Hunting and Gathering for Content!

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

Our Project

The Glen of the Red River project is part of the All Our Stories scheme, and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. To recap on our project, visit our All Our Stories page on our website.

Over the Summer, our website for the project was created, and the work the pupils of Kilmodan Primary created in the previous school year was given an online home! With their fantastic logo, timeline, and artwork, our website is up and running – now all we need is content!

Sadie and Alana headed down from TWTC HQ this afternoon to host our first new term workshop, to begin gathering the content for the website.

Where do we start?! At the very beginning, of course!

Today’s workshop focused on the Mesolithic and Neolithic time periods, and we learnt all about what life would have been like for our hunter gatherer and early farmer ancestors! The pupils came up with some great stories about life as Mesolithic and Neolithic clans, and created artwork and dramatic pieces of life in the Glen over 8000 years ago!

The pupils also created a soundscape, exploring life in the Glen in Mesolithic times – the story included howling wolves, hunting wild boars, fishing in the river, and running through the foliage back to base camp away from predators!

The research gathered and work created today will be put on the website, to share with the whole world what Glendaruel would have been like at the very beginning of time!

Interviewing Mrs McKay & Mr MacNaughton

June 13, 2013NewsAll Our Stories, interview, Kilmodan, Macnaughton, McKay, pupils, recordingsCharles

The pupils at Kilmodan have been interviewing two knowledgeable residents of the Glen gleaning lots of information about the history of our place. We’ve recorded it all, and in the near future we will be placing it on our timeline pages for everyone to listen to.

Workshop: Creating Visuals

April 25, 2013NewsAlana Mathers, All Our Stories, Argyll, Art, Clans, colour, Cowal, design, development, Families, Forest, Glen of the Red River, Glendaruel, Heritage Lottery Fund, History, Kilmodan, Kilmodan Primary School, Project, Rebecca Bloom, Timeline, Visuals, Walking Youth Theatre, websiteAlana Mathers

Date: Thursday 25^th of April 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School, Glendaruel

Workshop: Creating Visuals

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Rebecca Bloom and Alana Mathers

Today’s workshop focused on creating visuals for the website, to showcase the Kilmodan Primary Pupils artistic talents.

To start, we spoke about families and Clans, identifying family groups that currently reside in the Glen that the pupils are a part of, or aware of, and discussing iconic families and Clans from the Glen’s past – particularly the Campbells and the Lamonts. We then moved on to creating Family Shields – each pupil began creating a shield for their family group in the Glen. A variety of shields were created – some including representations of the houses, family members, work and employment, tartan, and of course, the Red River.

We then moved back to the timeline, and spoke about the way the people would have dressed throughout the years. The pupils had some great ideas on what fashion would have been like throughout the different time periods, thinking greatly about what resources, fabrics, and techniques would have been available at each point. From this, the pupils were then each given a period from the timeline, and set the task to create a character as an icon of their specific point in history. From Mesolithic Hunter Gatherers in animal skins, to kilted Jacobites, mysterious looking Monks, to trendy Victorian gents, the pupils captured the timeline characters perfectly! Look out for the characters on the website, and on the timeline!

Workshop: Red River Re-cap!

April 18, 2013NewsAlana Mathers, All Our Stories, Argyll, Cowal, education, games, Glen of the Red River, Glendaruel, Heritage Lottery Fund, History, Kilmodan, Kilmodan Primary School, learning, pupils, re-cap, Red River, Sadie Dixon-Spain, school, Timeline, Walking Youth Theatre, website, WorkshopAlana Mathers

Date: Thursday 18^thof April 2013

Location: Kilmodan Primary School, Glendaruel

Workshop: Red River Re-cap!

Walking Youth Theatre Team: Sadie Dixon-Spain and Alana Mathers

Today’s short workshop was very high-energy, and lots of fun! The pupils were all very enthusiastic about engaging with the Glen of the Red River project following the break.

To refresh the memories of the pupils, we played a number of ‘Timeline’ games, to encourage the pupils to think about the history of the Glen, and the time periods they have already studied. It was great to see how much information the pupils had remembered, and to hear the questions they were asking on life in the Glen throughout the ages.

The pupils also highlighted the particular historical periods they were most interested in learning about, and identified ones the curriculum had already touched on.

This afternoons activities allowed us to gather facts the pupils were already well versed in regarding particular historical time periods, particularly the Vikings.