Our first trip to Troon Beach this Summer with Bridgeton Hub families!

We had a lovely bus journey with our Porridge & Play Bridgeton families!

On one bus we sang Old MacDonald, played Alphabet Countries (thanks to Suleman as it’s his fave game) and “My Names Bob & I’m Very Big & I like to eat Bananas!”

And Virginia told the story of the Quangle Wangles Hat! (Which Licketyspit once did a show about – take a look here https://www.licketyspit.com/families-2/licketyspit-projects/quangle-wangle/#

On the other bus we chatted about the seaside and how excited everyone was about heading to beach! All the children were determined to go swimming even though the sun was not out today…but they weren’t worried about that at all!

After spotting farms & sheep and cows and forests (or maybe woods…. And some people playing golf!) to our great glee (delight) we suddenly saw the SEA!

It was windy & so sandy blowing in our eyes a bit but lots of us still hopped into swimsuits and leaped into the sea to paddle, to swim & to play – hooray!

It was COLD but it was So FUN! And lots of mums jumped in too!

Taz made us all lovely hot chocolate to warm us up. We moved our picnic up onto the grass beside the promenade near the beach so we didn’t get sand in our sandwiches!

The blustery day and the sea had made everyone very hungry for our baguettes, cheese,  hard boiled eggs and tomatoes, cucumber, grapes and hummus, Leena’s delicious yogurt carrot dish and later muffins – from Rasha’s Cupcake shop!.

We ran and we chased

And we danced and we played

And we sat to chat

Before some of us discovered a marvellous playpark!

Graeme & Andy were ready with the buses to take us home to Bridgeton – quite a lot of us slept all the way there!

We saw horses and ponies on the way back too – well, some of us did…Abakr & Mariam had a wee nap instead and Arafa, Ghada & Lina chatted all the way home!.

The water was salty

The seagulls so naughty

The sand was sticky

The  chocolate warm!

Oh how we love a day at the seaside with our Bridgeton pals!

Virginia, Sarah, Taz & Bridgeton Hub Families

With Storyplay friends from Bridgeton!

Troon Beach

July 2026

Our spirits weren’t dampened by a little light rain at Balloch Castle Country Park on Wednesday.

We first had a look at the spooky castle, talking about who might live in the building now overgrown with weeds – spiders, birds, perhaps something else…

On with our bright blue ponchos and we were off to explore.

Down down down the path to the loch, finding a marvellous playpark by the water.

We climbed and we jumped.

We swung and we slid.

Inside the ship’s galley we chased and we hid.

On pole, slide and seesaw we played and we played.

Children and grown ups all joined in the games.

The flying fox took us off with a whoosh!

We helped one another to climb on and push.

And when we got hungry we went back up the hill.

To have our picnic under a canopy of trees.

Ruby read Mrs Wobble the Waitress

Where children saved the day with nets and skates

Entertaining the customers as they caught chickens and plates!

We played I spy and the alphabet games on the bus

Put our phones away and it passed in a flash

“If we’d been at home on a day like this we’d probably just have been on

screens all day” Mum

We were wet, but happy thanks to Picnic & Play!

by Taz, Sarah, Ruby & Licketyspit Families

Find out more

With Storyplay friends from Maryhill!

Balloch Castle Country Park
July 2026

A new block of Porridge & Play sessions has started with a fabulous group of families – some returning friends and many new ones gathering for the first time at the big Reid Hall.

Our circle today was BIG and all the families were smiling and ready to use their imaginations, relax and have quality time together.

‘Make yourselves as Big As A Bear’ – warming up is great to get everyone ready!

Funky Chicken was a hoot, and we met very many animals –

Thrishitha was the Naughty Dog and Yachai was the Angry Bird

Maya was a Sneaky Snake and Zoe a Grumpy Lion

Zac was a Happy Dog and Shriyansh was a Sleepy Lion

Farah was a Cheeky Rabbit and Violet a Good Dog

And Mai got as all dancing as the Dancing Dolphin!

‘Flying Balloons’

There were yellow and rainbow and purple and gold

and silver and blue and green and classic red balloons!

And we blew them up big and we flew up high in the sky

And we flew and flew above the Canal – what can you see?

Red birds and apple pie that tasted of chocolate, steak or blueberries? We heard music, is that a drum?

We saw a dog and even dolphins in the canal!

Dressing up was a hit!

All our friends new and not so new LOVED dressing up in the Licketyspit way – we don’t dress up in a costume to be just one character, we take old clothes and we combine them to transform ourselves into many different guises and today we were PIRATES!

Meet Pirate Potato, Pirate Carrot, Pirate Pizza, The Clown, Pirate Piano, Pirate Alloa, Pirate Strawberry, Captain Seas, Captain Purple, Captain Precious and the world famous ARRRRGGH Captain!

We scrubbed the deck and aye aye’d to our hearts content – A Haaa!

Then we sat round our big great table full of delicious fruit and bread and cheese and we enjoyed a tasty Carrot & Coriander soup.

A fantastic first session for the current Maryhill Hub families who left home smiling and wondering where they could go next on a Flying Balloon…

See you all next week!

Andre, Ruby, Virginia & Taz

Maryhill Art Gallery!

READ SOME OF THE ARTIST’S COMMENTS FROM THE LICKETY ART GALLERY:

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

What a joy to see so many of the Licketyspit families together all at once! Of course, we missed those who couldn’t make it but we know that the New Year will bring more opportunities, more friends and more Storyplay!

Sunday was definitely a day to rest and reflect, not only about the Winter Ceilidh but also about all the adventures that we have had together this year: Big Porridge & Play in Castlemilk, Bridgeton and Whiteinch, Forest Storyplay at The Children’s Wood, Picnic & Play trips to Troon Beach and Loch Lomond, Porridge & Play Online, Forest Storyplay October Holiday and of course the Winter Ceilidh! We can’t wait to tell you our news for the New year and we hope to keep playing with you all in 2026.

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

We came from Whiteinch, we came from Maryhill. We all live in Glasgow; we love a picnic!

And do you know what else we all love to do? We love to Storyplay at The Children’s Wood!

At Forest Storyplay October Holiday Week Licketyspit families got together to enjoy playing outdoors and The Children’s Wood is an absolute favourite place for it!

Whiteinch and Maryhill families enjoyed another fabulous day out playing, sharing food and learning about fire & cooking with Andrea!

Funky Chicken was very inventive – we even learnt about a new animal with Yasna!

Frankie showed us The Saxophone Playing Turtle and Maya told us about The Cheeky Dog.

Yasna introduced us to The Titanboa and Ibraheem knew The Angry Fly!

Aveen showed us The Dancing Crab and Andzelika told us about The Dancing Fish. And Shirley & Arvin together showed us The Silly Pinguin!.

We flew high up in the sky with our Flying Balloons and from up there we saw water, a ship and pirates on the ship! Then Maha spotted the pyramids and realised we were over Egypt! We decided to fly down with our Flying Balloons to get some treasure from the pirate ship! The treasure we found was real coins and chocolate coins of different flavours!

Suddenly a Pirate appeared and shouted:

⁠‘Oi! This is my ship! BUT as it happens, I am looking for a new crew of UGLY pirates with UGLY names…like No Taste Rita or Dark Water Arvin’?

We jumped at this opportunity of course and quickly transformed ourselves into the Ugliest Crew ever!

Then the Real Pirate Captain of the pirate ship appeared, and the impostor Captain was made to walk the plank while the Ugliest Pirate Crew got ordered about to do different jobs like scrubbing the deck or cleaning the dishes and other hideous chores!

A Mysterious Woman who was actually very cheeky appeared and hired us crew to rob a BANK! Turned out it was a Chocolate and Sweeties bank…

Our pirate plan was to rob the Sweetie Bank and then keep everything for ourselves and give nothing to the Mysterious but Cheeky Woman and fly away again on our Balloons!

Mysterious Cheeky Woman showed us the way to the Bank but then we had to sneak in through a tunnel and dig lots and lots and lots until we found the riches! And in true Ugly Pirate Crew style we ran away with the bounty and flew back to The Children’s Wood for a picnic and a campfire with Andrea!

We baked our own stick bread and tons of yummy marshmallows!

We learned how to make fire safely and how to look after the forest so we can come back and enjoy it over and over again!

Forest Storyplay at The Children’s Wood truly is a Licketyspit favourite!

Taz, Sarah, Andre, Andrea & The Licketyspit Families

Thanks so much to all at The Children’s Wood for hosting Licketyspit’s Forest Storyplay during October Holiday Week!

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

 

To celebrate that Ruby wasn’t made out of jelly anymore we came up our very own Donut Recipe mixing –

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

Over The Children’s Wood we flew – Up, up, up with our Flying Balloons!

We saw a boat going along, we saw small trees, we saw a big dark sea monster and a rainbow snake with a lollipop!

 

The Children’s Wood truly is a favourite spot for us at Licketyspit and we LOVED our Forest Storyplay sessions this October Holiday Week!

On Tuesday families came from our Bridgeton Hub and Cranhill Hub for a day of play, friends, food and nature – what a hoot!

 We danced, played Funky Chicken and had a brilliant Flying Balloons adventure. We all became Rainbow Snakes using our brilliant technique for Dressing Up – in old any old clothes we can wear in such fabulous ways that we can be anyone and anything we can imagine!

While we made ourselves as dapper as cool Rainbow Snakes this Mean Woman suddenly appeared shouting at us all asking –

‘Are you all here for the Rainbow Snake audition? Are you?! Hurry up we don’t have all day!’

Suddenly we found ourselves auditioning for this Mean Woman and her Photographer assistant!

‘You, you and you! Step forward! Ok, what are your audition pieces??’

Of course we didn’t know what she meant. But she carried on bossing us about saying –

‘Can you dance or sing, or at least can you pose?’

Before we knew it, we were being called forward in little groups to strike poses and look fabulous – like Rainbow Snakes do!

There we all were, thinking we were doing great! but the Mean Woman kept saying we were rubbish!

So, Andre had enough and started a revolution! – we simply decided to not do what the Mean Woman was ordering us to do, and we went rogue!

The poor Mean Woman realised we weren’t listening to her at all! so she left, feeling sorry for herself…

Then a Bird of Paradise flew by and stopped to meet us – his feathers were bright and colourful, and we all clapped! We noticed he was a wee bit peckish, so we looked in our pockets for food, and we fed him bread, banana and chips. He was so pleased he taught us how to fly – very elegantly!

Then we met a Red Squirrel!!! They are so rare to see that we felt very lucky – but the Red Squirrel seemed sad or worried… Luckily Alan speaks Red Squirrel, so he translated telling us that the Red Squirrel feared a Grey Squirrel – you see, red and grey squirrels don’t like each other much.

‘We’ll hide you!’ we said, and we made a wee circle for the Red Squirrel to climb inside and as we turned round there was a great big Grey Squirrel looking at us like he had lost something!

‘Hey Grey Squirrel if you head over in that direction there’s a great picnic waiting for you!’

The Grey Squirrel headed off to find the picnic and the Red Squirrel felt very relieved.

After all that we realised that we also wanted a picnic too! So, we blew up our Flying Balloons again and went back to The Children’s Wood for our Picnic.

Then, so wonderful, we sat in a circle around the fire-bowl together! We learned to strike a spark before Andrea lit the fire for us to toast delicious marshmallows and pizza dough wrapped around long sticks!

Build a fire safely and don’t leave a trace,

Bake bread, melt marshmallows

And play with your friends

If we are respectful and kind with this place

It will welcome us always

With a smile on its face!

Thank you, Andrea and The Children’s Wood, for hosting our Forest Storyplay!

Taz, Andre, Sarah, Virginia, Andrea & The Licketyspit Families

 

 

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

Extravagant Forest Creatures, Wolves, a flying adventure and a Magic Ball out of this world.

 

The sun eventually shone on our last Forest Storyplay of this Summer and our Maryhilll Hub friends were more than ready to bring it to a magnificent end.

Our Funky Chicken inspired everyone – Maha showed us a Calm Capybara, and Dana a Crazy Chicken. Rita brought a Sleeping Dog, Adam a Hairy Dog and Amira a Happy Cat. Yasna went with the Funny Orca and Aveen with a Funny Crab! Eman showed us a Silly Parrot, Maya a Scratchy Lion and Mohammed a Fast Cheetah.

Flying up high with our Flying Balloons we saw a silver snake and a forest, an elephant, dots that were flowers, an African elephant, an elephant eating a boat, dragons, Mars! a costume party and we even flew down to the ground momentarily to get a piece of flavoured cake!

The Forest had some exotic creatures: two squirrels, a fox, a cat, a bird, two butterflies and a girl that lives in the wild –all of them were wanting to know what time they were at?!

What’s The Time Mr. Wolf?

Wolfie Rita lived by herself in a puddle that was sometimes warm and sometimes cold. Her fave food was blueberries and her red watch she stole from a shop!

Wolfie Squirrel – who looked a lot like Yasna – lived with her best friend the Rattle Snake. They lived underground. She had got her pink watch from her friends.

Wolfie Dana lived in a treehouse with caterpillar friends. Her fav food was strawberries, and she got her blue watch from a chicken!

An out of this world Magic Ball adventure!

After much discussion about where we could possibly go, we chanted the magic words and let ourselves go! When the zipper got unzipped someone shouted – We have landed at the MOON! Now, walking on the moon is a wee bit tricky because the lack of gravity so instead of walking we were really kind of bouncing and floating about.Upon further exploration we realised that the ground was kind of smelly…and tasty?

-This tastes familiar…

-Yeah like…cheddar?

-Wait a minute…are you telling me that the moon it is actually made from cheese??

There was a bit of a debate amongst us all about this and as we were debating

-Not only it is made from cheese but it also it’s made of a kind of cheese that will shrink us tiny, tiny SO tiny we can sneak ….inside…. someone’s brain!

A Moon Alien appeared right in front of us! It turned out he was a little sad and all he wanted was a wee hug.  As we are rather nice Earthlings, we gave him a group hug.He liked it so much that he invited us to visit HIS brain – since we had by now eaten so much Moon Cheese that we had become microscopically small.

-Sounds like a great idea! – we said because none of us – bar Maha, as it turns out- had been to a brain before.

Well, let me tell you…a brain is kind of wet and squidgy but very interesting. A White Cell that was passing by told us the way to the Cerebral Cortex where one could find memories from the past! But while were sharing our memories with each other a Red Cell suddenly appeared screaming ‘Emergency! Emergency!’

-What’s the emergency? – we asked

-Well, the Alien has cut his knee, and we need to build a scab, but we are running low on red cells like me at the moment!

-Could we help somehow? – we asked again.

And we did! Together we created the perfect scab mix: we mixed eggs, socks, shoes and plasters and covered ourselves in it to become the biggest scab you have ever seen!

It worked very well, and the Alien’s knee was much better after our intervention – job done and time to get back to The Children’s Wood for a picnic and a bit of Reflective Drawing.

We couldn’t have had a more fun last Forest Storyplay at The Children’s Wood, and we can’t wait to get back there for some more Storyplay soon!

Taz, Andre, Sarah, Emmanuelle and our Maryhill Hub

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

Forest Storyplay is a new collaboration with our friends from The Children’s Wood!

After last year’s fantastic Picnic & Play sessions and Storyplay Festival 2024 at The Children’s Wood we all wanted to go back there for more Licketyspit fun! The Children’s Wood are very happy to have us back and so this Summer we will bring families from across all our Hubs to enjoy more fantastic Storyplay outdoors.

Click on the logo to go to The Children’s Wood website!

At Forest Storyplay sessions this Summer we’ll have our Licketyspit games, a nice wee picnic and we’ll also get to learn a bit more about how to enjoy and look after The Children’s Wood!

Did you know that they grow food as well as beekeeping?

And that they have a labyrinth?

Did you know that not only they grow new flowers and plants but they also help the land recover by allowing different parts to grow wildly?

And do you know about the fairies? And the giant? And the dragon?!

I wonder how many characters and stories we can come up at the magical Children’s Wood…

We cannot wait to see you there very soon for FOREST STORYPLAY!

Taz, Andre, Sarah, Virginia & all at Licketyspit

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com

Find out what the Maryhill Group got up to during our Picnic & Play session at the Community Central Halls!

Tuesday 2nd July 2024

What can be more Summery than a picnic?… Licketyspits’ Picnic & Play! Even on a rainy day!

We met our Maryhill friends at the Community Central Hall this morning since the rain got a wee bit too heavy to play outside but did not stop us gathering and playing together.

We had exciting news to share about our upcoming Storyplay Festival happening on Saturday 13th of July at the fantastic Meadow & Children’s Wood: a festival of imaginary play, adventures, friends and food where you are the guest and the host all at once!.

We got warmed up and played some favourite Licketyspit games including an ‘up-in-the-clouds and down to the Mermaid Lagoon’ Magic Ball adventure! We then created self-portraits for bunting to decorate the Maryhill Den for the Storyplay Festival. That’s right!! Each hub of Licketyspits’ friends from all around Glasgow are going to make their own DEN at the Festival for all to visit and enjoy different fun offerings!.

The Maryhill families decided they wanted to create their very own song to perform at the Storyplay Festival. So we got to it after our lovely picnic and oh it was so much fun!

Together we came up with great rhymes and moves. And it wasn’t that difficult actually as we were already fired up thanks to playing all our imaginary games! So the ideas kept flowing and the Magic Ball adventure had us all totally inspired!- Singing with the mermaid had us all grooving!

Feeling tired?

Try moving around!

Find the courage to JUMP through a cloud!

Pick a balloon,

Learn a new tune,

Fly through the air,

Make friends with a bear,

With the wind in your hair …..

(What next? You’ll have to wait for more Maryhill Rhyming at the Storyplay Festival!)

All in all a most brilliant Picnic & Play reconnecting with each other playing, eating, creating and planning for our big Summer Storyplay Festival where we’ll get to meet other Licketyspit’s friends and families!

Can’t wait to see yous all there!!

Lots of love,

Steven, Sarah, Andre, Virginia, Taz & the Maryhill friends

There’s lots of ideas and activities to get you playing at home. Try our interactive videos! Including…

• Making with Iona
• Cooking with Taz
• Exploring with Jack
• Funky Chicken
• Grandma Grandma

and many more!

Find out more about what’s happening at Licketyspit by clicking on the button.

We have some Lickety Mums who volunteer at our Porridge & Play sessions as Storyplay Champions.

If you would like to find out more about Storyplay Champion training and volunteering, click on this button or get in touch with us on cfn@licketyspit.com