Storyplay City Week 5
Movement is Language!
Welcome to the Porridge & Play Online blog Storyplay City edition, where we share the stories of all the adventures
we’ve had during our virtual play sessions on Zoom! Get in touch to find out how to join.
How do we move when we’re stuck in mud? Or, if the ground is covered in ice? How do we move if our legs turn to jelly? Or if everything is slowed down? How do we move when we want to use our bodies to communicate something instead of using words?
This week’s session was all about MOVEMENT. We all have different and wonderful bodies that can move in all sorts of ways, and in this week’s sessions we explored how we can use movement to communicate and express all sorts of ideas and feelings.
Saturday
20 February 2021
Deep in ghosty park, in ghosty town, we must walk slowly on the sticky soft ground! If a ghost comes along…. Hide under a towel!
We met a ghost, in the Magic Ball, but Abdal saved the day with his knowledge of ghosty langauge! ’PAINT’ means hello in ghosty town! And ‘CABBAGE’ is ghost language for we mean no harm, we just want to leave! So we shouted ‘PAINT’ and ‘CABBAGE’ out loud, but it turned out the ghost just wanted to play, hooray!… So then we played a MIMING game!
The ghost turned around and we thought of an action… Adeelah and Muhammed suggested having a picnic! So we all tipped our teapots and ate slices of cake!
Ronald and Sylvia suggested doing the long jump! So we all leaped around and bounced for miles and miles! This made the ghost very happy indeed!
Suddenly in the distance we spotted a great GLOWING WALL! It glowed orange and yellow and red… it was Lawand’s magical SUNRISE LAND! We put on our ghosty gloves and flew on the ghost’s back and he dropped us down into hot delicious sunrise land. Bye bye ghosty! In front of us stood a great Sunrise Wall.. it looked so delicious that Sayeh reached out her finger to have a taste… and it tasted like honey!
We were all enjoying the delicious sunrise wall until Iona realised it was making her tiny! And before she could ask anyone to help her a great big blue bird swooped down and gobbled her up!! Ah!
Muizza bravely stepped forward and spoke to the bird to find out how to free Iona from her tummy! ‘Caw caw caw caw caw!’ And the bird picked us all up and swooped down to the magic ball so fast that Iona rolled out of her tummy, just in time to go home. Hooray!
What an adventure!
By the Saturday Gang, Andre, Jack & Iona 🍒
Wednesday
Wednesday 17 February 2021
Brain boxer! 🧠
Bread basket! 🍞
Chest wheezer! 💨
Toe pointers! 👟
These are just some of the funny names for body parts that we learnt at our fifth session of Porridge and Play this week! This week was all about movement, so we began with a groovy dance and a lovely stretch, placing an imaginary crayon on different parts of our bodies and drawing circles in the air. We even wrote our names only using our tailbones!
In FUNKY CHICKEN, we met some amazing animals, including…
Kamila’s dying bee! Oh no! 🐝
Tia’s sleeping koala, who went ‘snore!’ 😴
Areeb and Sarim’s strong rhino with a great big angry horn! 🦏
Brown’s Angry Cow was definitely an animal to be wary of, it angrily went MOOOOOOOO! 🐄
Crazy Frog was absolutely bursting with energy! 🐸
Erin’s ‘never stop eating’ panda! 🐼
Yumna’s talking parrot that said ‘Iona Iona Iona, squawk squawk!’ 🦜
Then we played IN THE WAY OF THE WORDS for the very first time! After splitting into two groups, Group 1 came up with an adverb – such as sleepily, happily, sadly, excitedly – and Group 2 came up with actions – such as waddle like a penguin, paint a picture, go fishing. Then, Group 1 had to MIME the actions in the way of the word and Group 2 had to guess what the word was!
Everyone was brilliant at acting and guessing, and a few of the children drew the actions in their reflective drawings! This would make a great game for families to play at home – have you got your Lickety Playcards?
There’s no session this week (Wednesday 24th) so we’ll see everyone next week for more playing and adventures!
From the Wednesday Gang, Iona, Andre & Taz 🍋
Thursday
Thursday 18 February 2021
Movement is language! Imagine you had a big crayon on your head and another one on your elbow, and another one on your knee, and another one on your tailbone… Now imagine the sky and all the space around you is like a great big blank piece of paper for you to draw on by moving all your body parts!
Pick up a massive ostrich egg and crack it on your head and feel it running down your face, your neck and through your back and down your leg… Now, shake it off!
This week we were exploring how we can communicate all sorts of things and express ourselves using movement, so we danced, explored different ways of moving, and even used miming to entertain a very bored talking horse we met on our MAGIC BALL adventure!
“We could mime and you could guess?”
“That sounds like a brilliant game! Yes, please!”
So, we climbed up a tree and picked up an apple and ate it! Then, we mimed a tea party where some of us were teapots and others were guests drinking tea and eating delicious treats! Our miming was so good that Mr. Horse rewarded us with a ride and a fly on his and his friends’ backs.
We also visited a very small castle with shrinking walls that we had to hold with our stretched arms so we wouldn’t get squashed. We visited a dark cave too! We realised there were glow worms on the ceiling that would glow and shine brighter by the power of singing!
🎵
Little glow light, shine so bright
So we can see the path
Little glow light
Shine so bright so we can the see the light
🎶
By the Thursday Gang, Iona, Andre & Taz 🍓
‘I drawed me acting out when we were sleeping and there’s someone on the computer guessing!’
Lily‘This is when we were playing the game and someone playing hop like a bunny – that says I love Zoom and I am happy!’
Sara‘One (picture) is the horse and two is the guessing game. This is a rainbow unicorn creating a rainbow on a sunny day!’
YumnaThis week’s gallery!
We’re having a break – but you can keep on playing!
There will be no Porridge & Play sessions on Wednesday 24th, Thursday 25th or Saturday 27th February as we take a wee break, but in the meantime there are so many ways you can keep playing! We have lots of resources to inspire imaginary play ideas on this website, such as videos and other activity ideas! It’s also great to get outside as much as we can, as there are so many ways to play outdoors. Or, if it’s rainy, why not write, draw, paint, or make up a story?
Over to you!
We LOVED these inventive, colourful pictures sent in by members of the Children & Families Network, and inspired by our Porridge & Play Online sessions! Yumna’s Rainbow (above) and Sara’s collage (below). If you’ve been using your imagination through creating, making, drawing, writing, making videos, or anything else you’d like to share please send your creations to cfn@licketyspit.com and we’ll add them to our Family Lockdown Album on Facebook and share them with the network!
Back to school!
If you have younger children going back to school this week, remember it’s normal for them (and you!) to be feeling lots of different emotions at the moment, whether that’s nervous, excited, worried, happy or a mix of everything! Everyone has missed school, so try not to worry about having to catch up or feeling behind. We’re all doing our best at the moment and staying happy is as important as learning right now.
🙋 For Nursery and P1-3 Parents: Each school may have a slightly different plan for reopening, but you should have heard from your children’s school what their plans are. Remember to keep maintaining 2m distancing from other parents at the school gates – but also remember under 12s do not need to distance from other children as they are very unlikely to pass on Covid-19.
🙋 For P4+ parents: As we look at another month of home learning for P4-7 and secondary pupils, remember not to worry about falling behind! Just do as much homework as you can manage, and remember that PLAY is brilliant for our bodies, minds and brains. Even older children learn loads through play – plus, it makes you feel great!
