Burns Night is a time to enjoy Scottish traditions and celebrate the renowned poet Robert Burns with a classic combination of haggis, neeps, tatties, some reciting of poetry.. It's also an opportunity to celebrate Scotland's enduring legacy of creativity.
At Portland House the Baby room 1 had lots of fun celebrating Burns Night with some different Scottish themed activities. In the morning the children helped to make Scottish shortbread weighing out the ingredients and mixing the mixture, something they all really enjoyed getting stuck into, and of course we had to taste them too “yummy”. In the afternoon we listen to Scottish bagpipes and drums, the children were very interested in the different sounds and we tried to copy the fast beat drumming our knees. Some of the older children also had a go at dancing to the music jumping and side stepping to the music.
In baby room 2 we celebrated Burns night by dancing along to traditional Scottish music, decorating Scottish flags and trying the tastes and textures of Scottish food, such as, mashed tatties with swede and delicious shortbread. It was a fun filled day enjoyed by all.
The children in the toddler room have been learning about the Scottish tradition of Burns night, we made our own Scottish flags and enjoyed some delicious Scottish foods during lunch time of neeps and tatties.
The preschool children had a special visitor from a Scottish heritage who came to talk to us all about Burns night, a daddy of one of the preschool children kindly agreed to come in and tell us a story that he would read to us all in Scottish which is the language that is spoken in Scotland. Keith came dressed in his wonderful special Scottish attire wearing his kilt to show us. The kilt is an important part of Scottish culture and heritage and it is worn on special occasions such as weddings, cultural events, and Highland games. The kilt is also an important part of Scottish military tradition, and it is worn by members of Scottish regiments in the British army.
The children listened attentively as he read a much loved favourite story in Scottish that the children were familiar with ‘ Going on a bear hunt’ some of the children recognised that the words sounded very different. Keith also kindly read one of our new story books called ‘Greyfriars Bobby’ by Ruth Brown. He told us that this story was based in Scotland from the little town where he and his family came from. Fancy that!
