Have you heard the news?! A few months ago, we were overjoyed to receive funding which enabled us to buy tablets and SIM cards with mobile data for families in our network and beyond, who would struggle to buy these themselves. This meant that they could join in with our Big Porridge & Play Online sessions! We can now tell you that we’ve received further funding from Migration Exchange and have a limited number of additional Lickety Tablets for eligible families!

If you are a migrant, refugee or asylum seeker looking to join our online imaginative play sessions, please get in touch to see if we can help you. Or, if you know a family who might benefit from this, help us to spread the word! Please note that as we do have a limited number to give out, unfortunately we can’t guarantee availability – we will allocate the tablets to families who most meet our criteria. Email Ruby on cfn@licketyspit.com or text/call 07413 800 342 and we’ll do our best to help!

Why are we doing this?

Well, as some of you may know, at Licketyspit we were already using lots of different ways to stay in touch with families in our network, as we knew not everyone could get online easily. As the pandemic hit this year, we spoke directly to our families – and this need for internet access and suitable equipment became even more apparent.

Thanks to funding from the Scottish Government’s Wellbeing Fund, as well as additional support from BEMIS, we were thrilled to be able to buy and deliver 25 Lickety Tablets to families in our network experiencing digital inequality! It has been fantastic to see the children getting so much joy from our sessions, but also knowing that they will benefit from all sorts of other online learning and connection that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

The benefits of Big Porridge & Play Online!

Our Big Porridge & Play Online sessions are more than just a couple of hours of great fun! By taking part in all sorts of creative, joyful activities, the children are then inspired to play and imagine at home long after the sessions are finished – which has been particularly useful during the lockdown.

It’s also meant they have been able to play imaginative games with other children who they might not otherwise have met, getting the benefits of socialising, making new friends and learning to play imaginatively with others. And for the parents, they’ve provided a fantastic way to feel less isolated by seeing other parents, carers and families and feeling part of something, especially by joining our network and getting access to our welcoming Children and Families Facebook group.

P.S. Our local community sessions go one step further, as you’ll also meet families who live close-by, and connect in the community Facebook group! At the moment, we’re about to start sessions for families in Ruchill and Milton. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more!

During the sessions we do things like… 

🚶 Fun and energetic warm-up games to get us all moving
🎲  Sing songs and play games using our Lickety Playcards as inspiration
😎  Dressing up with things we find around our houses, so we can transform ourselves into crazy new characters
🔮  Using our imagination to take a trip together, using our imaginary balloons or magic ball, and tell everyone what we see – we’ve been to Mercury, Mars, underwater carnivals, Marshmallow Land, Robot Land and so many more magical places!
🖍️  Encourage everyone to draw pictures for our Lickety Gallery – see opposite for just some of the fantastic drawings we receive!

If you’d like to join…

⭐  email us at cfn@licketyspit.com
⭐  text us on 07413 800 342
⭐  sign up using this form

We’ll let you know all the details, and which dates we’re welcoming new families at (we do this one Saturday per month). Our sessions are open to all children and families, so please do get in touch!

DIGITAL INEQUALITY

If you’d like to read more about the work we’re doing to help with digital inequality, and why we believe this is so vital, Artistic Director Virginia Radcliffe talks about this in more detail in Virginia’s Blog. We’d like to thank the Scottish Government’s Wellbeing Fund, BEMIS, Home Start Glasgow North and the Scottish Refugee Council who have provided either funding, or support, enabling us to achieve this wonderful goal of providing practical support – and a little more equality – to children across Glasgow.