Find out what the Cranhill  group get up to in their Porridge & Play Hub adventures each week! Porridge & Play is running throughout 2022 with this six week block being the first of many great tales!  Blog posts are written by Effie! Week 5 of Cranhill Porridge & Play!! Thursday 21st April It was so great to see everyone back after the break. We couldn’t believe we’d had two full weeks off, it felt like we’d never been away! We got stuck in with our Big as a Bear warm up and our Funky Chicken, and after singing a couple of our favourite songs (Grandma Grandma and Jelly On His Head) it was time to dress up! This week we decided to dress up as Witches! We met so many fascinating Witches at Cranhill Porridge & Play! Fascinating means extremely interesting First there was Rytoy the Silly Witch. Rytoy loves to make people laugh and she uses a magic potion to do it…. She wouldn’t tell us what the potion was though! She said it has too many secret ingredients in it…. Then there was Ninja Witch Amber! She is a very very sneaky Witch, when mum’s not looking she likes to sneak into the kitchen and take biscuits! And she wasn’t the only sneaky witch - we also had Sneaky Witch Bukunmi who likes people to think she is a very very [...]

Find out what the Cranhill  group get up to in their Porridge & Play Hub adventures each week! Porridge & Play is running throughout 2022 with this six week block being the first of many great tales!  Blog posts are written by Effie! Week 4 of Cranhill Porridge & Play!! Thursday 31st March What a great session to take us into the Easter holidays! We had such an incredible adventure in the Magic Ball which has gave so many ideas of exciting things you can do, places you can visit, and people you could meet using your imagination over the holidays. We started off by Dressing Up as adventurers and then Effie found the Magic Ball in her pocket and we knew it was time to go exploring. We thought about all the places we could visit - Dinosaurland, Disneyland, a hotel, the ocean, the North pole…. Anywhere at all. We jumped inside and said the magic words:  “Magic Ball, Magic Ball, take us where we want to go, Magic Ball, Magic Ball, take us where we want to go, Magic Ball, Magic Ball, take us where we want to go” Your Reflective Drawing from Week 4... 'This is everybody and we are in the magic ball!' 'I drew 2 magic balls I would go somewhere like this where I could play with all my [...]

Find out what the Cranhill  group get up to in their Porridge & Play Hub adventures each week! Porridge & Play is running throughout 2022 with this six week block being the first of many great tales!  Blog posts are written by Effie! Week 3 of Cranhill Porridge & Play!! Thursday 24th March What an exciting session!  After our usual warm up we decided it was time to dress up and this week we all became Grannies! We had scary grannies, funny grannies, nice grannies, hungry grannies - every kind of granny you can think of! Of course, we held a granny convention where we realised that granny school just wasn’t the same anymore! They thought that your Brain Boxer was a ‘head’ and your Bread Basket was a ‘tummy’ that your ee-peepers were just ‘eyes’ so Granny Agnes had to step in and teach them all the right names….. And they GOT IT! After that it was clear that everyone was ready to graduate from Granny Academy and head out into the world to be their best granny selves! Maybe next week we can explore some more character creations and see who we meet… Some of our favourite moments from week 3... 'this is my granny who is a super hero but its just pretend she could if you wanted to (save [...]

Find out what the Cranhill  group get up to in their Porridge & Play Hub adventures each week! Porridge & Play is running throughout 2022 with this six week block being the first of many great tales!  Blog posts are written by Effie! Week 2 of Cranhill Porridge & Play!! Thursday 17th March What a wonderful second session!  Our carrot & coriander soup was very popular today with second helpings all round - it is always lovely to sit around the table as we share a meal and catch up on what all our families have been doing during the week. After we’d eaten it was time to play some games - we met some truly wonderful animals in the Funky Chicken, particularly Josephine’s Snapping Crocodile, Amelia’s Cheeky Lion and Beauty’s Beautiful Goat. I can’t wait to see what animals you all come up with next week! After that it was time to dress up and head into the forest to play Monster’s Footsteps. We met loads of grannies living in the forest with strange trees at the bottom of their garden, that seemed to turn into monsters and start creeping towards us. We had dancing trees, scary trees and lots of giggly trees but none of the grannies were scared at all! Granny Fatima, who lives with her baby monkey in a treehouse was far [...]

Find out what the Cranhill  group get up to in their Porridge & Play Hub adventures each week! Porridge & Play is running throughout 2022 with this six week block being the first of many great tales!  Blog posts are written by Effie! Week 1 of Cranhill Porridge & Play!! Thursday 10th March Porridge and Play is back!!!   We had a fantastic first session at Cranhill Development Trust with all of the families who came to join us. It was an absolute delight to see the families playing together and getting stuck in to having fun. After we warmed up and met loads of Funky Animals we went flying in our Balloons and that’s when things really got interesting! As we were floating up in the sky we looked down and Heather saw a dinosaur and a lion hanging out together. When we looked a little closer Ryan saw some other animals heading towards them and we realised they were having a birthday party! We decided we better land our Flying Balloons and take a look but we couldn’t turn up to a party empty handed so we worked together to bake a cake. ‘Let’s Bake a cake, let’s bake a cake. Think of all the things that we like best. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, what shall we [...]

Find out about the brilliant time we had launching Porridge & Play in Cranhill Porridge & Play Cranhill launch! "Amazing interaction with the kids, loved the imaginative play!! Thank you :)" - Mum, Porridge & Play Cranhill On Thursday 3rd February we launched Porridge & Play Cranhill at Cranhill Development Trust. It was so lovely to come together in person and meet so many wonderful children and their families! We kicked off the Launch in true Porridge & Play style! We all came together around one big table and got to eat some homemade soup and try lots and lots of different fruit. We then got to watch our Storyplay Champion film all about Porridge & Play and what our Storyplay Champions like best about it on a big screen projector! We then all came together in a circle to play some well-loved games that you can find on our Licketyspit playcards! Amber singing Grandma Grandma word for word was a shining example that once you’ve played the games you don’t want to stop. It was great to see that Amber could do all the actions too, showing that the true experts in play are children. We of course took a trip in our Flying Balloons! This is when we landed at sea and discovered a Pirate ship! We all got to dress up as [...]