Porridge & Play Week 3 at the Children’s Wood!
Porridge & Play Maryhill 2024
Find out what the Maryhill Group got up to during our Porridge & Play Session at Oakgrove Primary!
Tuesday 14th May 2024
There’s no such thing as bad weather – only bad clothes!
Woah! What an amazing day!
We had hoped for sunshine but we got rain… but that didn’t stop us from playing! It really was an unforgettable experience!
When we arrived at the Children’s Wood, everyone’s smiles lit up despite the rain. We sang stood in a circle under the trees and learned to sing Ickerickeroo! A song full of brilliant Scottish words – teeth knashers, Nose-Blower, Eee-peepers, Luglisteners, Brain-boxer – thats what they told me when I went to school!
Andrea from the Children’s Wood was waiting to meet us. She told us the story of how the Children’s Wood used to be football pitches but when people stopped playing football, the forest grew on the pitch! She prefers the forest… us too!! And it was such a beautiful place to do Storyplay!
We played Tree Tag – like Tag but when you get caught, you become a tree! It was really fun playing it in the beautiful wood among the real trees! But then rain came down really hard! Oh no!
Andrea had made us a shelter so we stood in a lovely circle with the rain drumming on the Tarpaulin above our heads and played Funky Chicken!
Amira became a Kitty Kat who likes to eat fish all day! Ayaam became a Naughty Giraffe with a great big neck. Shawn was a Silly Monkey! Simi became a Sneezing Snail, Muaz was a Fat Elephant and Sam was an Eating Fish! Mali was a Meowing Cat and Emaan was a Pink and Blue Kittie!
It was soon raining hard so we all sat down around Andrea’s Fire Bowl and she lit a beautiful camp fire! She put Vaseline onto cotton wool balls and laid them on the sticks, rubbed her Fire Starter to make sparks & the sticks caught light! While we were waiting for the fire to get going we sang our own version of Jelly on his Head!
We met people who wear some weird things when they sleep!
Andrew who sleeps with Popcorn in his Mouth, Jamie who sleeps with Lip Balm on, Lisa who sleeps with Red Eyes in her Mouth and Berry Rose who sleeps with Slugs between her Toes!! How do they do it? I couldn’t sleep like that. And turns out, our AP Cami sleeps with Jam on her Knees! She says it’s comfy but it’s not!
Then ……we turned ourselves into a group of scary, cackling witches round a pot cooking on a fire! We chanted Bubble Bubble Toil & Trouble! – and created a lovely horrible brew of lizard, smelly toenails, eyeballs, smelly brains, glasses and smelly toes! It smelt really bad – as you can imagine!!
But that horrible smell was soon taken over by the lovely smell of the fire which was now ready!
Andrea explained how to be safe around a fire – not getting too close, sitting or kneeling rather than squatting so you don’t topple over and moving around the back of the circle, never across it too close to the fire bowl.
She had brought us lots of long pointy sticks & she had made us a big bowl of Pizza Dough. She took a handful of dough and twisted it around round the top of each stick for us to hold over the fire to cook! It was delicious! Then we toasted marshmallows! Yum!
As we sat around the cosy fire and toasting these delicious treats we made up a story together – passing the story round the circle from person to person!
Once upon a time in a dark wood, there was a dinosaur named Alex. It was a rainy night, when suddenly there was a loud noise! It was like a thunderstorm! (but also like the sound of a cake!) The dinosaur gave a great big roar but he sounded kind of like a cat?
Then, out of nowhere, came a wizard who said ‘I’m coming for yooooooou!”
The wizard walked towards Alex and Alex was nervous. It was dark and rainy and all Alex could see was the figure of the wizard coming towards him. As the wizard approached, Alex heard a strange sound coming. The wizard was purring – he was a cat wizard! Alex was so excited! (He loved cats more than anything in the world) The wizard towered before Alex! He was a tall man dressed in blue robes with a great, big, grey beard. The purring wizard said to Alex that he’d put a spell on him to turn him from a dinosaur into a human but Alex said NO! He didn’t want to be a human, he wanted to be a cat! But it turned out the wizard didnt know that spell!
Alex was dismayed! Luckily there were two big, purple cats hiding behind a tree nearby. The cats were called Hamnis and Houbs and they knew the spell that Alex needed. The cats ran in circles around Alex while chanting the words ‘SPHURGLE MEOW MEOW’ over and over again. An enormous flash of light covered Alex and he was turned into… a kitten! Alex cried and cried. He didn’t want to be a kitten, he wanted to be a cat! Fortunately, the cat wizard was still there. He was an expert on cats. He knew that if Alex just waited a few years, he would grow up and become a cat!
Many years later, Alex roamed around the forest as a great, big purple cat.
What a story! Thanks to everyone who came and played with us. We had so much fun this week and every week at Oakgrove Primary too! We can’t wait to celebrate all the fun we’ve had with you this Tuesday!!
See you there!
Lots of love,
Steven, Sarah, Cami & Virginia
