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

We had lots of fun with a very clever bunch of witches too who had marvelous witchy cackles and some very exciting juices including purple poison and large amounts of seagull juice. Very tasty!

Talking of seagulls, we saw some very cheeky ones at the beach who liked sandwiches and muffins. One of them actually swallowed a muffin whole!

We all enjoyed a tasty picnic and some yummy ice-cream which was a real treat.

Then after all the delicious food we went to explore the beach and had so much fun together, paddling in the sea and finding treasure on the beach. We found pools of water in the sand,bright green seaweed, lots of different shells and even a crab skeleton.

It was such a lovely day and just before it was time to go home, we had a game of Olly Olly Octopus which was so much fun! Then it was time to say goodbye to the sand and the waves and the shells and the naughty seagulls and so we all got on the bus for the journey home.

Once we were all on the bus, we started to feel a bit sleepy after all the glorious fresh air, so some of us enjoyed a wee nap! Troon beach was just a brilliant day out!

Sarah, Ruby, Andre and our Cranhill 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

A very sunny last Picnic & Play of the Summer in Troon Beach and our Whiteinch & Online Hub pals did not hold back…

The sun was shining, and our friends were well prepared for Picnic & Play on Troon beach – swimming costumes & goggles, big brothers and sisters, smiles and excitement – fantastic ingredients for a cool day taking Storyplay out and about!

We found a great spot on the beach, a big space that seemed to have a circle already drawn on the sand…coincidence?

Our circle was big and our warmup busy – we danced, we made ourselves as Big As A Bear and we had a good stretch while taking that beautiful salty sea air in.

Of course we played the all time favourite Funky Chicken and we had a Scary Tiger, a Galaxy Axalot, Jumping Starfish and Snapping crocodile amongst other funky animals!

‘Hello My Name Is Joe’ had us all pressing imaginary buttons vigorously and then we had a good round of Witches Fingers – cackling and running away!

Love was in the warm air with ‘Letter to my Love’ and after all that the excitement was growing and the hunger was too!…PICNIC TIME!

Everyone tucked in and got their energy up to get ready for seashore exploring and swimming! Shahla had brought cinnamon roles for everyone too which were delicious. Yum!

Let me tell you – our friends were ready to splash, dive, paddle, jump and explore stones and shells and even jellyfish!

Grown-ups also paddled and refreshed in the sea, it was actually not cold at all, and the sun was lovely and warming so if you ever got a wee bit cold in the water a few minutes out in the sun would warm you up again!

It felt even more like the perfect beach day as after our sea playing, we had delicious ice cream.

It’s funny how you can feel many things at the same time…we were a bit sad to leave the beach and at the same time we were so happy and grateful for a fabulous day on a beautiful beach with lovely weather and brilliant friends…

This was our last Picnic & Play of the Summer and the whole Licketyspit team felt very chuffed because it has been an absolute blast out there Storyplaying with our brilliant, creative and brave families! Huzzah for friends & play!

Sarah, Virginia, Taz, Nerea, Catherine & our Whiteinch & Online pals!

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 all know how fast the weather in Scotland can change but our bold Govan & Online Hubs are always ready to adapt and enjoy whatever the weather.

We arrived in Balloch and saw some of the impact of a storm that had happened a couple of days before – branches scattered around and still some gusts of wind blowing now and again, whistling loud in our ears. We found a nice big clear space up the hill where we could make our circle and off, we started with Storyplay!

Have you tried dancing outdoors? We very much recommend it – you may even get some other passing people to be inspired to join you!

Funky Chicken was a lot of fun, and Hello My Name is Joe got us all panting and laughing in equal measure.

We met a few Witches & Wizards with long fingers and a flair for making different bottles of strange beverages – even a tiny wee Witch who chased us all!

As we were starting a game of ‘Letter To My Love’ the skies opened, and a summer shower descended upon us! But Licketyspit & friends are adaptable and determined so we quickly found cover under a canopy of trees where we not only played our game, but we also set up our camp so we could have our Picnic protected by the gorgeous big trees…it was rather magical!

We tucked into our picnic and drank hot chocolate, and then we were ready to set off and explore around beautiful Balloch Country Park at the Loch Lomond shores!

Loch Lomond is BIG and DEEP but oh so beautiful and inviting…

Swings and Swims!

Some of us had a blast at the brilliant play park – zip lining, pushing with our legs, learning about monkey bars, climbing and sliding, seesawing…

And some of us were immediately drawn to the water! – Aminata, Safa and Fatou were the first ones in. They didn’t hesitate and soon they were all swimming.

Azeem got inspired and after some discussion…in he went too!

Soon everyone else was exploring the shore: throwing stones, looking at pebbles and imagining finding some gold!

Then trousers got rolled up and many of our pals were paddling in the water and taking in the beautiful view and enjoying the great outdoors.

Many grown-ups and children said what a beautiful place Balloch is – for fun and games, adventure but also for peace and quiet and to relax in nature.

We all felt lucky and grateful for being outside, playing and happy with such a great group of pals – it was hard to leave as we were having such a great time but, you know what? Balloch and other wonderful spots in Scotland are there for all to visit and take care of so we can continue to enjoy our beautiful country!

A fantastic day all round with a fantastic bunch of families!

Taz, Sarah, Andre, Taiwo, Zainab & our Govan & Online pals

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’s the saying? If life gives you lemons…make lemonade. And if the Picnic cannot happen outdoors…have it indoors! Our fabulous Bridgeton Hub wasn’t fazed by the change of plan because the truth is, ALL we need for a brilliant Storyplay is our imaginations and each other! And that we had!

That’s the great thing about Storyplay, we can be anyone, do anything, go anywhere with our imaginations and so today although we were indoors in a fantastic big hall at the CCH in Maryhill, we had a sea adventure as The Ugliest Pirate Crew ever known to Scotland! Amongst other things actually…

As we always like to do, we had a nice big warm up – we first had a nice boogie and then we stretched to our Big As A Bear rhyme!

We also met some cool animals playing Funky Chicken – Emilia showed us the Jumping Snake, Alan the Flying Fly. Tanisk came up with a Flying Car and Moira created the Angry Crocodile. Lexi was a Crazy Giraffe and Leeanne was Purring Cat. Lin created a Fast Dog and Suleman an Angry Cat.

After that we all became Cackling Witches with long witchy fingers coming up with all sorts of weird concoctions to drink!

‘I’m going to drink a bottle of…Snake Juice!’

 The big Reid Hall at the CCH is a great space to run around and the Witches had it tough to get to catch people after saying ‘I’m going to drink a bottle of…POISON!’ – but they still managed!

Dressing up was deliciously UGLY! Ugly? Well, aye, aye! And you know why? Because the challenge was to become the Ugliest Pirate Crew Ever Known to Scotland!

Captain Tatty Scone – who looked a bit like Taz – was recruiting for ugly pirates and our Bridgeton Hub raised to the occasion and became as ugly as ugly can be! Once the level of ugliness of these crazy pirates was established Captain Tatty Scone started shouting orders about –

 SCRUB THE DECK!

            CLIMB THE RIGGING!

                     and….. WALK THE PLANK!

The Ugly Pirates were very good at following orders so the Captain decided to do some Captain try-outs and let some of the crew be in charge…

We had Captain Ridhi who was mean and Captain Lin who was very interested in keeping the ship clean! Some of the other pirates didn’t enter the try-outs but started calling themselves Captain none the less! At some point the whole crew was made of Captains which doesn’t happen often but we seemed to be getting along fine, so all the Captains decided it was time to cross the Seven Seas…underwater! We took a big breath in and underwater we went – there was a shark that looked scary but Alan using his Shark language knowledge managed to persuade it not to eat us up!

– Who has the treasure map? – said a Captain

– I have the map! – said Captain Salah

– Right, let’s take a look – said another Captain

We quickly worked out that we had to swim to a desert island if we wanted to dig out the treasure and so off we swam until we got there.

-I found the spot!

-Everyone DIG!

There were coins and jewels and all sorts of fabulous treasure to share and also we found…A LOVE LETTER! Naturally we decided to play I Sent a Letter to My Love and it was great fun! We had our lovely picnic sitting on picnic blankets, and we even had some ice cream with sweeties as toppings Tarika brought for everyone.

We also had time to do a Reflective Drawing and to visit the Licketyspit Art Gallery and after that we even had a game of Tunnel Tig and the very best Hide & Seek game ever known to Scotland! Bad weather? Who cares! What an absolute hoot this Indoors Picnic turned out to be!

Taz, Sarah, Andre & our adventurous Bridgeton 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

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