Licketyspit’s Just-So-John Bookplay

2026-04-15T08:10:35+00:00

Bookplay is a Porridge & Play session where we all listen to a Story and then instead of the Magic Ball we ALL JUMP into the world of a BOOK to have an adventure! The Just-so-John Bookplay stories are by a writer called Rudyard Kipling who was born 160 years ago in India! Rudyard travelled all over the world, which was quite amazing because this was before there were aeroplanes so you could only travel by foot, by boat, by horse, by bicycle  or by train!!   Rudyard's stories for children were inspired by all the different places he saw - a bit like us with our Flying Balloons game! His Just-So stories are about animals in India and Africa! (His most famous children's book is The Jungle Book - which you might have heard of! ) His Just So Stories are about how he imagined some of the animals in the world came to be the way they are - how the camel got his hump? , how the leopard got his spots?, how the whale got his throat? and other questions. Virginia's Dad John loved these Just So Stories when he was a child. When he grew up he read them to his children (including Virginia) and then he read them to his grandchildren! John lived until he was nearly 91! When he died  some [...]

                  Licketyspit’s Just-So-John Bookplay2026-04-15T08:10:35+00:00

A fabulous Porridge & Play Maryhill Celebration!

2026-03-31T09:42:46+00:00

Lots of Storyplay, lots of friends, lots of food, lots of FUN on our last session of this block. We always call the last session of each block a Porridge & Play Celebration because we celebrate many things that day – making new friends who live in the same bit of the city, learning things about each other, learning games that we can play together as a family and as a community, tasting and sharing delicious food and the fact that the Licketyspit family of families keeps growing! Our circle was as big as ever and Big As a Bear got louder than EVER! Andre got everyone going and ready to welcome Funky Chicken – Zoe was a Naughty cat,  Xiyu a Golden Fish, Maya was  the Silly Giraffe and Waheed a Mountain Lion. Xiya became Karate Cat, Violet was Sunny Dog and Salaar was the Funny Lion! We particularly loved being Dying Flies today! Next up was Dressing up – the Maryhill Hub families, children and grown-ups alike, are big fans of Dressing Up and they became exuberant Chefs with exuberant names like Lobster Chef! Ruby Chef was in a pickle because she needed some fresh ideas and help for an exquisite new cake recipe…we all were up for it: Let’s Bake A Cake!! With ordinary and extraordinary ingredients – [...]

A fabulous Porridge & Play Maryhill Celebration!2026-03-31T09:42:46+00:00

Friends, witches & a Magic Ball adventure!

2026-03-20T16:41:39+00:00

So we were nine families with 14 children this week at the CCH for Porridge & Play Maryhill. Everyone is feeling like we’ve become old friends!  We started with a Dance Warm-Up to Salaar’s favourite song - Thunder by Imagine Dragons - and some Sufi poetry Amna introduced us to! Rita said “Do you know the Funky Chicken?” And then an amazing array of characters appeared - The Squirmy Worm, Dizzy Elephant, Sunny Dog, Funky Monkey, Naughty Octopus, Scary Tiger, Lazy Cat, Loud Dinosaur, Happy Butterfly! Not forgetting Aarushi’s Jumping Rabbit and Shriyansh’s Jumping Dolphin! Then we played “I’m going to drink a bottle of!!!…” This was Lizzie, Zoe & Zac’s first ever Witches Fingers and they created fantabulous witches - he he he! Arvin was a Witch in our marvellous Magic Ball Story which Rita has written about below! (His witch pretended to eat the Ball - disaster! - but she tricked us!) Our Dressing Up today was a delicious array of colour and invention and so was our Storyplay, and our food was delicioso!  We had great chats and we realised that today is EID! So Happy Eid to all our friends Here is the Magic Ball Story and our amazing Gallery! See you all next week for our Maryhill Hub celebration! Andre, Ruby, Taz [...]

Friends, witches & a Magic Ball adventure!2026-03-20T16:41:39+00:00

Forest creatures and a Wolf with a watch in Maryhill?

2026-03-12T17:24:32+00:00

Week two of Porridge & Play MARYHILL got us all sharing our best moves - warming up our bodies and our imaginations, singing, dressing-up to transform ourselves into Forest Creatures and much more! A very Big Circle to see everyone, Cause our games are way best when we’re ALL in the fun! First Big as a Bear gets us all going, Running and jumping we are telling a story, About how we can be whatever we like! An Ox or a Hare or a Bird flying high! So many of us here so let’s hear all our names, And show everyone our cool move as well! Then The Funky Chicken shows up to play, Can you think of an animal? Does it move in some way? What sound does it make? Can we do it again?! Maya’s Funny Duckling liked Olesya’s Sleepy Tiger Amna’s Happy Penguin liked Salaar’s Cheeky Lion! Yachai’s Funny Bunny saw Rita’s a Happy Butterfly, Shirley’s Jumping Rabbit loved Stephen’s Hyperactive Sloth! But, have you heard before about a man called Fred? Who likes to go to bed at night with Jelly On His Head? If that sounds a bit silly just wait ‘til you hear, What a girl called Bella Spears takes to bed in her ears!! We sang about Grace, about Claire, about John, What other funny [...]

Forest creatures and a Wolf with a watch in Maryhill?2026-03-12T17:24:32+00:00

Licketyspit’s WINTER CEIDLIH

2025-12-16T18:30:19+00:00

Licketyspit’s Winter Ceilidh 2025 was a HOOT! We had a fabulous gathering with live music, delicious food, hilarious dressing up, high energy dancing and lots and lots of friends! Saturday afternoon in Glasgow was wet, windy, cold and rather dark but the Community Central Hall in Maryhill was full of warmth, music, laughter and imagination at Licketyspit’s Winter Ceilidh!  Families from our Licketyspit Hubs in Bridgeton, Castlemilk, Cranhill, Whiteinch, Govan, Maryhill and Online arrived ready to have a joyful time and celebrate the great year of imaginary play we have enjoyed together. Our Licketyspit APs and volunteers got the hall cheerfully decorated and put together some tasty food for all our guests - samosas, pakoras, fresh fruit, fresh bread, cheese, tomatoes & cucumbers, hummus, tzatziki and a nice selection of little cakes and hot chocolate with marshmallows for all. It was so brilliant to have The John Somerville Ceilidh band returning to our Winter Ceilidh to play beautiful tunes and help us all with our Ceilidh dancing - some of the children were helping some of the grownups with the dances too! A great thing about Ceilidh dancing is that you get to learn many different steps and also you get to dance with so many different friends - perfect really so you can have a wee dance with pretty much everyone!   [...]

Licketyspit’s WINTER CEIDLIH2025-12-16T18:30:19+00:00

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!

2025-10-23T10:15:23+00:00

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 [...]

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!2025-10-23T10:15:23+00:00

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!

2025-10-23T09:45:49+00:00

Be anyone, go anywhere, do anything outdoors at The Children’s Wood!   On Wednesday this October Holiday Week some of our friends from Castlemilk came over for a day of imaginary play outdoors, food sharing, friend meeting and campfire action with Licketyspit and Andrea from The Children’s Wood. What a fun day outdoors! Playing Funky Chicken our friends transformed quick as a flash and before we knew it Fiire was the Funny Flamingo and Timi was the Hungry Dinosaur! Mohammed was the Naughty Robot and Gabbie the Happy Axolotl! Desi became the Crying Dinosaur and Kieran the Cool Cat. Sayeda turned into the Crazy Dog and Ammar into the Scary Dog! Ryan was the Jumpy Frog while Danylo was the Yellow Chick. Malcolm roared like the Lazy Lion, Pemi became the Lazy Squid called George and Abu turned into the Angry Gorilla! We blew our Balloons so big that we flew up in the sky - Desi spotted mountains with witches eating chicken wings While Gabbie saw adorable bees asleep, Abu could see donuts – big donuts! And Pemi showed us a dragon with silver titanium teeth, green eyes and green acid coming out of his nose! Desi could also see flying donuts that could drop zombies!! We had to fly down for a donut after all that donut chat and while we were [...]

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!2025-10-23T09:45:49+00:00

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!

2025-10-17T16:27:41+00:00

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 [...]

FOREST STORYPLAY back for October Holiday Week!2025-10-17T16:27:41+00:00

Picnic & Play: CULTURE in GLASGOW

2026-04-15T11:45:25+00:00

Discovering what’s free to do with your family in your city! We are very lucky to have fantastic museums and cultural venues in our city and many of them are free! Picnic & Play is all about taking Storyplay out in the world - we sometimes go to beaches, other times to lochs or parks but we also love to go to museums! Picnic & Play in Glasgow is all about families taking local public transport to travel to enjoy Storyplay and a delicious picnic with Licketyspit at one of our wonderful Glasgow Museums - we have been to Kelvingrove Galleries, Gallery of Modern Art, the Tall Ship and this Easter we are having brilliant Storyplay at the Riverside Museum - the museum of Transport! Since Picnic & Play is all about exploring other places through Storyplay we thought that makes us STORYPLAY Explorers! And so our intrepid families imagined themselves beautifully with the help of Dressing up and turned themselves into a very vibrant bunch ready to discover all sorts of things using our Magic Ball… Magic Ball, Magic Ball Takes us where we want to go! Whooooooosh! A Magic Ball Adventure narrated by Storyplay Champion - Arvin (aged 9) We got out of the magic ball and we saw a wild boar but luckily we got away into a pack of trees. [...]

Picnic & Play: CULTURE in GLASGOW2026-04-15T11:45:25+00:00

Picnic & Play with our BRIDGETON HUB!

2025-09-08T10:40:45+00:00

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 [...]

Picnic & Play with our BRIDGETON HUB!2025-09-08T10:40:45+00:00

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