JOHN MUIR BY P.5

WHY ARE WE LEARNING ABOUT JOHN MUIR? In primary 5 we are learning about John Muir because we are doing something called the John Muir Award. As part of this we have learned about his life and why he is so famous. We are also working hard with the ranger, Sam, to improve our wildlife garden as part of the award.

JOHN MUIR – WHO IS HE? John Muir lived from He grew up in Dunbar, East Lothian and then moved to America. As a boy he was a keen explorer and was nearly always outside. As a child and adult he loved learning about nature and later did lots of things to conserve the land. His family moved to America in 1849 and when he was older John Muir went to the University of Wisconsin. During his time working in a factory he badly hurt his eye with a needle and had to stay in a dark room for ages. During this time he decided when his eyesight returned he would commit his life to nature study. He said he would only work with nature not against it. John Muir

JOHN MUIR - TIMELINE Mimi made this gigantic timeline of John Muir’s life. Let’s listen while Mimi tells us about significant parts of his life.

GOING TO JOHN MUIR’S BIRTHPLACE John Muir’s birthplace is in Dunbar. We went to John Muir’s birthplace which is the white house in the middle of this picture. We got to look around the house and found out a lot of interesting things about him, our favourite was: he made a chair that had a gun on it and when you sat on it it went off with a They changed the chair so it made a more friendly sound for example a piano. It was a really fun day learning about John Muir.

DRAMA We also did drama with Shona. We did sketches about John Muir when he was young we did a sketch about him finding a family of mice in a weird way, scootchers, John Muir’s school days, and what he did when he lived in Dunbar as a young boy. The clip we chose to show you is about what it would have been like at school when John Muir was a little boy. Here is the clip of the drama starring: Logan, Taylor, Louisa, Jack, Amy, Daisy and Anna.

JOHN MUIR ART WORK In class we have also created art works related to John Muir. We sketched pictures of John Muir, drew our favourite ‘wild’ places and we also worked in pairs to create pictures of nature using some of his most famous quotes. Here are a few examples of our work…

OUR VISIT TO YESTER ESTATE First we went to the wildlife garden with Sam the ranger and looked at some examples of wildlife and discussed why we need to take care of local wildlife.

Sam then introduced us to some stuffed animals including a fox, a stoat, a badger and a squirrel.

After that we went to Yester Estate and went in the woods. We were put into groups and had to make some nests and our whole group had to fit in it. Then we made a nature trail for a different group to try and solve.

To end our trip we went back to the wildlife garden and had to smell the trees. The smells were vinegar, onion, lemon, and squashed blackcurrant.

RANDOM JOHN MUIR FACTS He liked nature He used to play in the rockpools in Dunbar When he was going to move to America his grandpa gave him a gold coin you can see the gold coin in his birthplace. Once John, his brothers and sisters, went for a walk and they were so hungry that they stole some eggs from a farm and ate them! the farmer was watching them and he ran after them and back home the farmer came to John’s house and told their father about the eggs.

QUIZ TIME!! P1: What did John Muir like most? P1/2: What country did John Muir move to? P2/3: What did he accidentally stab his eye with? P3/4: What two things did we make at Yester Estate? P6: What sound did the chair make? P7: Where did John Muir grow up and what colour was his house? Whole school : Have you enjoyed this presentation?

THANK YOU FOR BEING A GREAT AUDIENCE