Big Porridge & Play Week 4
Meeting Bold Margaret & Worried Margaret in Licketyleap!
Welcome to the Porridge & Play Online blog, 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.
Do you know Margaret & Margaret?
Bold Margaret and Worried Margaret are the two main characters of our play – Licketyleap!
Licketyleap is a Licketyspit show where the children leap into the story and go on a fantastic adventure with Margaret and Margaret, all the way through the Bog, over the Sea, into the Cave and up the Mountain to find their Heart’s Desire!
As you can imagine all sorts of thing happen during their adventure and Margaret & Margaret and the children realise that we are all a bit like both Margarets: sometimes we are bold and ready for anything and sometimes we get worried about things and that’s OK!
Wednesday
12th May 2021
A CAVE!
‘What if it’s dark?’
‘What if I get cold?
A BOG!
‘What if I get stuck in it?’ (Magnus)
‘What if I get lost?’
‘What if I don’t have any shoes and my socks get all dirty?’ (Fiire)
The ZOO!
‘What if the lions eat me!?’ (Osato)
‘What if the giraffes lick me!?’ (Lily)
This week was all about characteristics! What would a BOLD character look like? What would a WORRIED character look like? Never fear, 🙋 Margaret & 🙋 Margaret are here to show us the way! Margaret and Margaret are characters from Licketyleap – one is BOLD and one is WORRIED! We met them this week to go on an adventure as worried and bold characters!
🐦 Willie the Worried Woodpecker (Iona) and 🪨 Rhonda the Bold Mayoress of the Boulder on top of the Hill (Taz) joined forces with 🦁 Bold Simba who lives in a house (Keith), a 👸🏽 Worried Princess (Fridaos) and a 🐕 Bold Long Tailed Dog (Lily) to go on a Magic Ball adventure! There they met a ⚔️ Knight (Magnus) who was bold at first, slaying a dragon, and then got a bit worried! They met 🐻 Adesayo the Bold Bear who lived on top of Mount Everest!
We were all a bit worried about this bear, but then she used a great big rope to pull us out of the bog! A brilliant bear! Junior spotted a magical doorway and was a bit worried about going through it… but it was all ok, so he wasn’t worried anymore!
We can all be worried AND bold, we are all fabulous just the way we are! 💓
By the Wednesday Gang, Iona, Taz & Andre 🎈
Thursday
13th May 2021
The Thursday gang had a go at being Bold Margarets and Worried Margarets and then we thought that it would be fun if we dressed up as any character we’d like, but we could choose to make our character either Bold or Worried! We transformed into a gang of Bold and Worried people and after Michelle, Miracle & Emmanuel got the Magic Ball ready we took off!
🏖️ We landed at a glorious long beach! And as we were a mix of Bold and Worried, some of us were delighted to jump in the sea to swim across to a distant funfair but some of us were actually rather worried about sinking in the sea! With a bit of persuasion and support we all ended up swimming in the sea and Taz who was not sure at all about it at first was very pleased that she could in fact float!
🦑 A Sea Monster appeared out of nowhere and oh! A few worried faces were unsure, but Hilde reassured everyone and that the Sea Monster was offering us a lift on its back to the funfair, which was very kind and very handy too!
🎡 The sounds of the funfair were in the air! And the Strongest Man in The World got challenged by Presley, Abdullah and Felicia and showed him that they too were super-strong. But the challenge did not end there, oh no! The Jumping Far Challenge was too good to resist so they jumped to Mars and back! To space and back! To Neptune and back!
🤡 The Juggling Clown displayed her tricks and she juggled so well that one of the balls went up and never came back down!
🍦 Let’s have some ice-cream! Delicious and it comes in many flavours! Amir and Ameen got some cones for everyone and suddenly… Taz started to shrink until we could only see her big pineapple glasses! Quickly we tried different combinations of flavours until Adesiree and Felicia found the right combination to bring Taz back to her original size.
You would think that all that would have made Taz worry even more, right? Well, the opposite happened. Through her adventure she grew more confident and realised that there’s no point in worrying about everything and so she was asking for another adventure! But the time had come to return to the Magic Ball and that was ok too because we realised that we all have a bit of BOTH Margarets in us! 🥰
From the Thursday Gang, Hilde, Iona & Taz 🎈
Saturday
15th May 2021
🥾 There’s a bog, a bog, a squelchy squelchy bog! Can’t go there, I might get STUCK!
🪨 There’s a cave, a cave, a dark dark cave! Can’t go there, it might be DARK!
🌊 There’s the sea, the sea, the big blue sea! Can’t go there, I might get COLD!
…yes, we can! We’ll bring a towel, and a great big fluffy jumper, to keep us warm! If it’s dark we’ll take a 🔦 TORCH and if it’s muddy we’ll take some 🥾 BOOTS! Let’s be BOLD and have a brilliant time!!
On top of the great big mountain high, there’s a 🐻 Big Bold Bear called Brendan, he likes to eat bananas! Rhonda’s here too, living inside a Roundhouse, she loves eating rhubarb, but feels a bit worried! Bold Islam is here, he’s feeling GREAT and knows just what to do! Oh look, there’s Grenda who lives under a Grenade, she’s so BRAVE, she’s got a 🔮 MAGIC BALL!
Blow it up Grenda go go go! Let’s fly to the 🐱 CASTLE of CATS, and stroke their fur! Let’s squelch in the bog and hold each others hands, if someone falls in we’ll pull them out! A mud fight, you say!? Hip hip hooray, getting MUDDY is really FUN!
Oh who’s this? Mrs Oogly Boogly… oogly boogly oogly boogly! She’s making 🎂 a mud cake, a cake for Lawand, it’s his 7th Birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday he’s bold and grand, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday Lawand! 🎁
Another fantastic session! Have a brilliant week!
From the Saturday Gang, Taz, Jack & Andre 🎈
The Lickety Art Gallery!
Licketyspit in Connecting Scotland article
We were thrilled to be asked to speak to voluntary sector publication Third Force News about Connecting Scotland, the Scottish Government programme aimed at tackling digital exclusion which has resulted in us delivering 40 Chromebooks and Mifis in January 2021 to 48 families in our Children & Families Network. It was great to see the article mentioning our Lickety Zoom sessions, and our recent Lickety Mums Digital Know-How Sessions with the Scottish Refugee Council!
The magazine can be read online – skip to pages 20-23 to read the full article!
“The Chromebooks and Mifis were delivered just as the funding ran out for the sim cards we had provided with our Lickety Tablets back in May 2020, and the long-term connectivity they provide is a huge relief for families we work with. We were also very pleased to hear John Swinney commit to providing internet devices for every child in Scotland, if re-elected, as there are still many families on our waiting list and elsewhere who need connectivity.”
Glasgow Science Centre’s Curious About Innovation Festival
If you or your family are interested in things like 🧪🔬 🔭, science, innovation, space travel and technology, this online festival run by Glasgow Science Centre may be right up your street! Running from 19–21 May, there will be live talks, interviews with astronauts, online games and workshops. Visit the festival website at curiousabout.glasgowsciencecentre.org to register and find out more…
A thank you letter from the Scottish Government – to YOU!
We’d like to say 👏🏾.a huge well done and thank you 👏🏾 again to all of the fantastic participants in our recent focus group and one-to-one sessions, which helped to inform the work of the Scottish Government’s Collective Leadership Group.
We were delighted that all of the participants received a thank you letter from Lesley Sheppard, Deputy Director: Children’s Rights, Protection and Justice, which outlined how vital their insights and views had been – and how their input had directly affected key decision making by the Scottish Government! Well done everyone! 🥰
“Your participation and willingness to share your own views and personal experiences has provided such valuable insight into the issues you have faced during the Covid-19 pandemic and has played an important part in the decision making […] We would be keen to engage with you further, and potentially look at how we can ensure your views and experiences can help us develop and design solutions and enable decision-
making as we progress through the pandemic. Your frank and honest engagement will enable us to ensure that together we can design solutions which are meaningful, and which, we hope, will bring about change to help you, and others in similar circumstances.”
