BeithFest is a community celebration of Scottish beer, music, food and fun in the town of Beith, North Ayrshire.
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Tinkertown is an inspiring place, a scrap timber village built by children for children (and their families).
Developed in the spirit of authentic ‘Adventure Playgrounds’ and in response to the inaugural Architecture Fringe (Archi-Fringe) Festival, Tinkertown welcomed 200 visitors across four days to the Pollokshields Playhouse in July 2016.
So much promising talent in Beith as Football Camp at Beith Astro last week was a smashing success. Over 30 children from the Garnock Valley took part, learning new skills whilst developing existing abilities.
Week long Holiday Camps @ The Astro, 10am – 3pm. With trips to Sea Life and Hampden Park, there’s something for everyone!
Doc and Bert attend the plants in the poly tunnel every morning to make sure they are watered and cared for to ensure bountiful crops in a small space! The plants include many kinds of salad leaves, 4 different types of tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, a wide variety of herbs, carrots, cauliflowers, lemon grass, kales and chards, potatoes, peas, beans and chilli peppers to name but a few!
Fun Friday’s kicked off last week with an open campfire acoustic music session. Musicians from all over came together to have a jam in a fun social environment.
A fresh Sunday morning in the heart of the Garnock valley, a warm summer like day with a gentle breeze. The sound of bicycle tyres on gravel and walk ways, the smell of burgers cooking slowly on the BBQ. The droning noise of the bouncy castle being inflated and the sound of people arriving. This was our Bike & a burger event.
Why build a bug house/hotel, well there are three good reasons, firstly for us all there is only so much you can learn in a classroom, through books, videos or TV. To truly appreciate and understand nature you need to venture outside, use your senses and experience for yourself the wonder of nature. For as the naturalist and conservationist John Muir advocated experiencing and enjoying nature near and far means you are more likely to care and be an ‘active conservationist’.
Secondly in an age of immediacy a bug hotel/home teaches patience in its planning, construction and having to wait days, weeks or months to wait and see what creatures use it plus tweeting occurs outside not online. Read More
Kids Gigs
Come and meet The Minority Rule, have a go of the instruments, and see the band play a half hour set and have a jump around.
Sunday 12th March 11AM — 2PMSunday 12th March 11AM — 2PM Geilsland school, Beith KA15 1HD
Beith cycles is a new initative to encourage the people of Beith to get on their bikes! We want to find out what improvements you think could be made to support cycling and active travel in the area. The goal is to encourage people of all ages and abilities to travel by bike so come along, grab a burger and have your say!
- Bouncy castle
- Electric bikes
- Balance bikes
- cycle games
- free bike MOT’S
- FREE ADMISSION!
Thistly Cross Cider will be providing some amazing ciders at the festival this year. The festival will be starting at 1pm and finish at 9pm.
This Sunday the 29th of May 2016 history will be made in more ways than one as Beith Juniors play Pollock FC in the ETHX Scottish Junior Cup Final at Kilmarnock FC’s ground Rugby Park. This is Beith’s first junior Cup Final and the first for Pollock in 18 years so for both these clubs and the competition history has already been made.
Pollock have reached five junior Cup Finals winning three, whilst for Beith this has been and continues to be an exciting adventure for all involved with the team and for the community.
Why dear readers have I called this the romance of the cup, well cup finals are one-offs where no matter what level you play at, if you will excuse the cliché, anything can happen, history and a team’s form can go out the window once that whistle blows and the game begins.
Getting to the Final means you will be remembered, win or lose, although preferably win as your name will be forever etched into local folklore as well as onto Scottish Junior Cup history propelling you into the Scottish Cup first round.
Turnstiles open at 3.05pm (kick-off 4:05pm) prices for the game are £5 for children and senior citizens and £10 for adults (payable at the gate). The Pollock supporters will be in the main stand with Beith supporters in the East stand.
As Beith Juniors themselves have stated ‘The ETHX Energy Scottish Junior Cup Final is a high profile day for everyone involved and it is important that everything goes well, the success of the cup final can determine the media response to Beith as a community, to Beith Juniors FC and to Junior Football in general. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the qualities of our town, community and our Football club’.
Moreover as far Pollock FC and their supporters are concerned this is the biggest game not just in Scottish junior football but Scottish football if not beyond this season.
For those unable to attend the game, it’s being televised live on BBC Alba, Freeview channel 7, coverage starts 3:55pm and continues until after the presentation of medals and the cup to all those involved from the officials to the players on both sides.
I hope all those who are able to attend the game have an enjoyable but safe time, on this most special of occasions.
I would like to thank both Beith juniors and Pollock FC for additional information about the ticketing, when the turnstiles open, where the two sets of fans will be seated and how each sees the game. Lastly up to this moment there hasn’t been any commitment as to which side I’ll support come Sunday well what better way to put this to bed but to say ‘mon the mighty’.
Beith Juniors Girls Football Team received their certificates after 13 weeks of long hard work towards their Play Maker award. The award consists of workshops, activities, projects and tasks to learn about how to be a successful, fair young leader. The girls completed projects such as a role model task in which they selected a role model and discussed what made that particular person someone to aspire to as a leader. A big congratulations to the girls and their coach Karen Millan for all their hard work, a very well deserved award!
On Wednesday I joined the team at Soup Group where we explored the outdoors, performed taste tests, played in the playhouses, toasted marshmallows and… ate soup! We had so much fun running about gathering sticks and other objects to build dens, we then had a competition to vote whos was the best den, although I had ventured between all three helping all teams to design and build their den. Our taste test was a hit and a miss, some children discovered they love some salad and others were less impressed with our efforts of a healthy snack. Finally, we gathered together round the fire for hot soup which all the kids loved and melt in your mouth marshmallows (they were my favourite part). I think its fair to say we all had a blast!
Check out our photos here
Every Hamlet, Village, Town, City in the world has something unique about it. I will admit to enjoying walking round places that I’ve never been to or those I have and discovering something new. Even if I forget to turn the map round making it easier to read and figure out where I am.
With this in mind I was walking round Beith and passed the Beith Auld Parish kirk which I’ve passed more times than I care to remember and noticed a plaque. The plaque was split in two, the first part gave you a rough history of the Kirk, the second was a short biography about JOHN Witherspoon, he was the Parish minister in Beith from 1745-1757 but outside of Beith is perhaps more famous for being the only clergyman to sign the American Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July 1776 and his links to Harvard University.
Across the road from the Kirk before you reach the High Street is a small monument and plaque to Dr Henry Faulds born in Beith (39 New Street) he was the first person to publish a detailed report on ‘the conception of fingerprints in criminal investigation’, in the scientific journal Nature in 1880, as well as founding the Tsukiji hospital in Tokyo in 1875.
Those of you reading this might be saying, this is interesting but in what way does this relate to Beith Community Development trust (BCDT), well dear readers the connection comes slightly further up the road into main street. In Main Street Is/was the Pop-up Design Studio. As well as for the next six months BCDT are working in collaboration with local businesses to improve the appearance and condition of Beith Main Street.
The above is a clear example of continuity and change, the continuity being the history, culture and society that has shaped Beith today and change. The change being Beith stepping out of the shadows of the past, embracing it but not being defined by it. Like all change sometimes things don’t go exactly to plan, success of a project/scheme can be difficult to quantify. But change if is done in the right manner it can be an enabler for a community writing a new history while acknowledging it’s the past.
By William Morton
Even though we are all very sad its over we had so much fun on our very last day at Play Scheme! We stated off with a treasure hunt meticulously searching the garden for our gold we looked up and down and all around and eventually we all had a gold medal each – we were super proud of these!
After we headed over to the pitch for a game of kick ball it was girls against boys and the game was on!!! We ran about so much that we needed a break to catch our breaths.
Later on we played all sorts of games like hockey and dodge ball and finished off with games using the parachute, our favourite was Chinese whispers while we all hid as a group under the parachute.
We then went in for some yummy lunch and finished off our awesome day with some party games inside. We can not wait until Summer Play Scheme starts!!
After catching up on our sleep from last week we prepared for a fun filled exciting week ahead. This morning we started off with relay races leaping in and out of hurdles and weaving in and out of cones whist trying to dribble a ball which a few of us found super tricky! We then moved on to a popular favourite between us ‘Pop-up Dodge Ball’ we spent ages running about and popping up and down until we got so tired we had to go for a break.
We then decided we needed a rest so we grabbed the chalk and got to work decorating the slabs in the Astro with everything from water melons to elephants. After, we all moved on to the pitch and played football, splat and whats the time Mr Wolf all these games gave us such a big appetite just in time for lunch.
After lunch we had a mini hockey tournament which took us all they way to home time. We had so much fun but need some rest before it all starts again tomorrow.
Last night the Beith Juniors 2003’s football team started their PlayMaker award, the first qualification of the Sports Leader Awards. After being a little sceptical with huffs and puffs they really got into the swing of things and I might even have heard an ‘this was really fun are we doing it next week?’ This week’s activity was ‘What is a Leader’ – the boys had to form a straight line with the leader at the front. The leader would either run, jog or sprint whilst shouting commands that his team followed. Each of the boys took to the role pretty well and after everyone had a turn at being a leader we had a group discussion about what makes a good leader, what might have happened if they hadn’t done these things and what are the main leadership skills that we identified whilst doing the activity. The boys gave some good answers like ‘making sure everyone stayed in line so we didn’t crash’ and ‘project your voice so that everyone can hear what you are saying.’ They then decided on a couple of skills that make a good leader for example ‘making sure everyone is happy,’ ‘keeping everyone safe’ and ‘making sensible decisions.’
The PlayMaker award is a great introduction into leadership for pupils or students. The award focuses on developing leadership skills and I can already see some budding leaders in this course.
This week at our cooking classes we got together with our friends to create some more spooky bakes in time for Halloween. This week we decided to get our hands dirty and bake some bloody cauldrons! In hopes that we would produce a smooth pastry dough we mixed all of our components together in our mixing bowls consisting of basic ingredients such as; flour, butter and water. Once we had mixed everything together we began to roll out the mixture with our rolling pins so that we could eventually cut into Halloween inspired cauldron shapes. Once we had perfected the shape cutting technique we placed our six pastry shapes onto our baking trays, forming into witch-like cauldrons. After all of our hard work our pastry had become golden and risen in the oven, leaving only one last task to be completed – the blood (strawberry jam) distributing. Check out more photos here. Well done everyone another fun bake!
This week Soup Group took a scary turn we started off with colouring in some scary pictures to hang on our walls – we coloured in everything from witches and cats to haunted houses.
Next we all took part in some ‘apple dunking’ it took a lot of tries for some of us to catch one, some of us got it on our first try and some of us found it to tricky and had to use a fork to catch one but in the end we all had a delicious apple to eat.
After we got put into groups of two and were given a pumpkin each to share and carve into some scary faces. It took a lot of effort to scoop all the slimy guts out of the pumpkins and then carefully use the carving tools to create our spectacular scary masterpieces.
After all that hard work we lit the pumpkins and turned the lights off to have our soup and tell some spooky stories.
Check out our pictures here
We had an excellent day hunting for bugs with our bug hunting equipment. We had a checklist to work through and tick off and w searched everywhere, under rocks, behind branches and in little hiding places so we cold spot spiders, slugs, ladybirds and caterpillars. We had magnifying glasses, bug boxes and some bug nets … though we were very careful not to hurt them and to put them back safely. We learned some cool facts about bugs like … beetles can glow in the dark, butterflies taste with their feet and ants can carry up to 50 objects at any one time! wow! We then made some bug houses for our bugs and gave them shelter, food water and somewhere to rest, and then we added some new features to our bug hotel! Great work everyone! 🙂
Last night we had 10 mini gardeners come along and help us with our plants and vegetables. We started by planting some sunflowers and learned some things about them such as the tallest sunflower ever was grown in Germany and grew to 27 feet high! Next we made some planters from recycled plastic bottles and hung them up on a fence that we made from recycled wood, we talked about how this helps the planet as well as looking very cool! Then we went into the polytunnel and harvested some lettuce, cabbage, celery and runner beans and we weighed them so we can work out how much CO2 we have saved through growing our own food. We leaned some facts about these foods such as cabbage is one of the oldest vegetables in the world and lettuce was 1st grown by the ancient Egyptians. We also learned that carrots are a root vegetable like beetroot and turnip and that carrots also come in lots of different colours including white, red and purple! Then if our hands weren’t mucky enough we went out and built our very own fairy garden … we even saw a fairy hiding under the flowers! To finish we decorated one of our garden benches with the words “no act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted” which was a lovely message to end on. Thanks to everyone who came 🙂
Last night we had great fun at soup group! We started by making boomerangs from recycled cardboard, then we tried throwing them … with some interesting results! Then we made some creative natural art from leaf prints by spending some time searching for leaves in the woods of different textures, shapes and sizes and printing them onto paper in different, bright colours. We were very impressed by the results!
Afterwards we played some parachute games and dodge ball and then enjoyed some delicious soup and marshmallows on the campfire! Big thank you to Alison Nobel for making the soup, it went down a treat! Same time next week everyone for some more fun and games!
Yesterday, as part of our carbon project we were lucky enough to be invited into Gateside Primary School to talk to the whole assembly about our Food Waste Challenge. If you haven’t heard about this yet we are challenging the whole community to reduce their food waste by 15% which means that we reduce our carbon emissions significantly. How? There are some small changes we can make to our daily lives such as making a shopping list so we aren’t tempted to buy extra food, storing food correctly, making creative meals from leftovers, planning portions correctly and eating food before it goes out of date! Why do we care? According to the figures published by love food- hate waste, we throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink every year, the majority of which could have been eaten! It costs us £12.5 billion per year (about £700 per family per year! And don’t forget about the environment, as food rots it releases CO2 and contributes to global warming, by reducing our food waste we can make a difference – the equivalent of taking 1 out of every 4 cars off the road! For more info check out www.lovefoodhatewaste.com or to take part in our challenge contact us at Beith Trust. The challenge is simple, all you need to d is tell us about your food waste before and after following the guidance and we will calculate your carbon emissions savings for you!! Call us on 01505 228141
Last night we welcomed some play rangers from Eglinton Country Park to join our soup group fun. We had a great time with them and they helped us do a bug hunt in the garden. We had large magnifying glasses and bug boxes and we found all sorts of creepy crawlies including worms, spiders, caterpillers, slugs, butterflies, ladybugs and even some frogs! We learned a wee bit about them … for example, did you know there are more different kinds of beetle than any other animal on the planet? Afterwards we enjoyed some delicious soup on the fire made kindly by Karen Ronald and some delicious apples picked from the apple tree in Sara Harvey’s garden … thanks guys!! And of course some hunting for the perfect stick for marshmallow toasting was great fun!!
What a fabulous day at the streetmeet in Lomond Crescent on Saturday! Well done and thank you to Kathryn, Mhari, Gordon and Steven who put so much effort into organising the event and making it a success. There was a lovely sense of teamwork and community spirit and it was great to see so many people there. The kids had a ball playing on the bouncy castle, playing sports, doing arts and crafts, playing parachute games and having their faces painted, transforming them into their favourite characters. Everyone enjoyed the delicious food that everybody brought along to share and told stories about living in Lomond Crescent over the years which was really nice! It was also really nice to see people getting to know neighbours they hadn’t had the chance to meet before, everyone was in good spirits and the sun was a very welcome addition to the day.
If you would like to organise a streetmeet for your street then get in touch!
We had a blast last night making homemade pizza from scratch! 12 kids came along to learn some cooking skills and had great fun mixing ingredients, rolling dough and making some creative faces out of our yummy healthy toppings. It was great to see the little ones gain confidence, and also to hear from our previous little chefs about the meals that they have been making at home since developing their culinary skills. Check out the pics of their masterchef masterpieces !
We had a great time at soup group last night! We started with a team relay race where kids were given letters and had to explore the garden to find items starting with that letter until the whistle was blown which was the cue for coming back to get the next letter, the team at the end of the game with the most correct items written down was the winner … but somehow the teams managed to tie! It was great to see the weird and wonderful things they came up with to gain extra points! We then played the magic welly game which involved getting the team from one side of the radioactive material to the other with only one pair of protective welly boots that couldn’t be thrown across, again it was great watching the kids problem solve and come up with different solutions to the problem. We then played a blindfolded game where the kids had to put their hands in a bag and feel an item, guessing what is was – an interesting game with some unusual suggestions! Thanks to Sara Harvey who made us some delicious soup which we enjoyed with some marshmallows and a fun game of sharades. Same time next week everyone!
Last night we were building on our further ‘young leader’ sessions. This is a progression from the playmaker award qualification that some of our kids have already earned and others are working towards. This session involved a discussion on safety … how a session leader would make sure the activity was safe including equipment, area and participants. We were very impressed with some of the answers the kids gave, showing their thoughtfulness and awareness on this subject has really developed through these sessions.
We then had some great fun in the garden, playing some searching games and then playing I spy around the campfire. We enjoyed some delicious vegetable soup kindly made by Irene Broughton which went down a treat.
Same time next week and spread the word for everyone to come and enjoy the session as we have a guest coming next week who is keen to speak to everyone involved In this project.
Last night we had great fun at soup group! We started with a ‘who wants to be a millionaire’ quiz in which the kids were split into teams and nominated a candidate to come forward and answer question a question on a topic such as maths, geography, science, language or nature. They had 2 lifelines, either a 50:50 or a clue. This was a lot of fun and saw the competitive streak come out in everyone!
Next we played a thought provoking game involving the following scenario:
They are on a sinking ship with 10 other people, a rescue ship is on its way but there is only space for 8 other people so 2 must be left behind. They are given a choice between a teacher, a policeman, a postman, a young child, an old lady, a priest, a doctor, a convicted criminal, an artist and a chef. After long discussions about who they would leave behind and a final list was made I gave them some further information about each person that drastically changed their opinion …
For example, the doctor is retired due to injury and cannot treat people anymore, the convicted criminal is an ex soldier with great hunting and defence skills, the artist used to be a builder, the old lady is a great cook and is trained in herbal medicine, the postman has specialist survival skills qualifications and first aid training and the chef is great at cooking but is very greedy and won’t share food.
We asked the kids what they learned from this exercise, the answer was not to judge people too quickly or make assumptions about how valuable somebody can be. It was very touching to see them come to this conclusion.
We had great fun last night at soup group! The session started with each kid being given a secret praise word which they had to integrate into the following games. This was a word of motivation or encouragement for other players and the aim of the game was to use the word as often as possible in context and then at the end the others had to guess what the word was. Rebekah impressively used her word 10x!
The first game was football, followed by an interesting game of the human knot. The first version was the normal game, but we then added some different elements such as one hoop racing the other with either prizes for those responsible for overtaking, or forfeits to the person with the hoop that gets overtaken! We then discussed how we rated the games on fun and why … with a strange result … the kids liked the threat of a forfeit more than the possibility of winning a prize, going against learning theory science.
We then split the kids into girls and boys and asked them to tell us what they think are the 3 most important things in a game. They came up with some great ideas like good sportsmanship, rules, understandable instructions and fun. Very impressive how tuned in these kids are!
We then made some cool arts from paper plates and then had some delicious soup on the campfire … thanks Alison Nobel, it went down a treat! And thanks also to Sara Harvey for the cake … and to Robert for serving it to everyone! The featured pic is when I asked the kids to show us their perfect smile!
See you all next week!
Our kids are getting more and more interested in their natural environment the more we learn and have noticed some unusual weather for this time of year. Leaving school for summer holidays in pouring rain brought up some questions and we decided to be our own scientists and track our weather system.
Each kid made a weather monitoring chart for a month of the year at our session last night and we are keen to track the weather including temperature, wind speed, rainfall, snowfall and episodes of thunder and lightening but also the effect that has on the environment around us, for example what kind of plants grow in these conditions, what kind of animals like this weather and what kind of food can we grow…
Our little scientists will bring you results as we gather our data …
Well the weather certainly wasn’t on our side for an outdoor cinema yesterday but we had a great day all the same. Thankfully we had a plan B and had an indoor space to transform into a cinema to kick start the summer holidays. The kids all arrived full of excitement and picked from a selection of funny films to match the mood. They selected Meet the Robinsons, a film about a brilliant young inventor called Lewis who takes us on a futuristic exploration of a new world, full of imagination and surprises. This film didn’t disappoint and had the kids laughing (and us at times too).
But you can’t have a cinema without popcorn and snacks right? Thanks to Jennifer, we enjoyed some delicious home cooked ad healthy snacks which went down a treat … we even had homemade popcorn! Great afternoon, look out for our next event!
Today saw the end of an era with our last breakfast club session before the summer holidays … but we didn’t let this dampen the mood, we had as much fun as ever … we even wrote a rhyme about the weather:
“Breakfast club is fun,
we go outside and play every sunny day
But when its rainy, it’s a painy
So we have to be inside today” Very funny!!
We brought out one of our rainy days games … a favourite … twister! This is always a lot of fun, with a real competitive streak emerging!
We finished by creating our very own breakfast club superhero! The kids always have some genius ideas and today these included the ability to breath under milk (rather than water), an egg shield, the ability to shoot cereal at people, cereal goggles, a spoon as a sword and an invisibility cape!
We asked the kids for feedback on what they liked about breakfast club .. they gave us a huge list of things, too many to mention but they included things like “It is fun”, “it makes the morning better” and “I look forward to coming here” and we also got a nice thank you card
Hopefully see you all again after summer!
Breakfast club was great fun this morning! It all started with some favourite tunes and a sing along with cereal … and some funky dance moves from Andrew!! The kids are all in good spirits, excited about the idea of only a few more days left at school!
We made the most of the sunshine by playing hide and seek in the woods with the kids finding some new and impressive hiding places. Ryan’s champion hide and seek title was being threatened by the others today but these kids are becoming evermore competitive!
The walk to school was full of fun with the kids wearing their schoolbags backwards and entering into a relay race in teams on certain parts of the walk with Ryan and Esme winning by a millisecond!
Last day tomorrow before the school holidays so lots of fun planned … don’t miss out!
Last night we were lucky to be joined by some wonderful musicians who showed off their talents entertaining us around the campfire. It was a great evening, the weather was on our side, everybody pitched in to help with chopping firewood and food preparation … a big thank you to everyone who brought something for the BBQ, it was al delicious! The entertainment included some favourites by Oasis, Greenday and some country classics that got everyone engrossed in the music and even joining in singing at times! The musicians and singers were brilliant, capturing everyone and creating a lovely atmosphere that brought so many people together. Well done to Rose who did her first ever solo and blew us all away with her beautiful singing voice! We also had some wonderful duets and it was great to see some improvisation and creativity happening between a group who are bonded by music. The good vibes weren’t constrained to the campfire area though, as we were looking around we could see people on the football pitch dancing and the kids playing up in the woods singing along too. … And let’s not forget the marshmallow madness … nothing beats toasting on an open fire! A big big thank you to everyone who joined us last night and especially to the guitarists, violinist, singers, drummer and Gillian Ritchie who organised the music for giving up their time and making the night so special. Check out our pics on facebook.
Last night saw an end to our current block of cooking classes and we are very proud of what our little chefs have achieved!
This session involved us taking a virtual trip to the Philippines to see how rice is grown and cultivated, giving us a real sense of appreciation for the work farmers do and how valuable and precious our food is.
Running with the theme of grain we made some delicious oat biscuits, a simple recipe with delicious results! These little pros knew exactly how to follow the steps, sieving, mixing, rolling and baking to perfection. As the biscuits were baking away, filling the whole building with that home baking smell we took some time to learn about different types of grains, where they come from, what they look like and what we can make from them. Very interesting to learn about some of the foods we eat everyday!
We would like to thank the wonderful Jennifer for sharing her skills and knowledge with us over the last 6 weeks and we can’t wait for the next block to start.
Keep up the good work little master chefs!!
Since the sunshine was hiding this morning, we hid from the rain and let the kids demonstrate their artistic skills. The opportunity to improvise is always welcomed and is great for us to get an insight into how our kids express themselves. Today we had some lovely pictures from the girls ranging from drawings of nature and starts from favourite films .. and the boys took a slightly different approach designing and decorating model aeroplanes … although we think the turbulents may have been too much this morning!
Our walk to school was filled with balance exercises and one of the kids’ favourite to date … spinning all the way up the red brae hill … I hope they are not too dizzy to learn in class today!!
Only 1 week left of breakfast club before the summer holidays so why not bring your little one down to try it out and see how much fun we are having!!
This morning we had a new breakfast club recruit and the kids had great fun showing Andrew the ropes!
After our usual Tuesday morning breakfast chat, sharing all of our exciting stories from the weekend (and the kids guessing Claire and Lisa’s ages just to ruin our day) we made our way out onto the pitch to play some energising games! The favourite game of the morning was cats and mice … a game where the cats have to chase the mice and catch their tails. This was exciting and competitive with Callum demonstrating his impressive speed, outsmarting all the cats!
Despite everyone being puffed out we still had the walk to school to tackle and as always this walk is no ordinary walk. Today’s challenge was to weave through the railings and still make it to school on time … and as you can see from our picture this challenge was happily accepted.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s fun …
As always we had lots of fun, eco friendly activities for our kids coming along to carbon crib last night! We began with a word search about global warming which taught us a lot about what is happening to our planet through our activities and how we can reduce the harm to earth.
We then made our way to the lovely woods where we collected sticks to make special bug houses. This requires following a specific technique, the strategy used by tribal people in remote villages all over the world still today. Our secure structures will provide shelter and safety to a variety of species of wildlife, particularly insects and mice.
We finished our session by improvising musically. Our ids are all great at singing and performing but we needed some musical instruments to compliment their talents! We found a great selection of trash that we improvised with to create something very cool. We used plastic bottles with stones inside, traffic cones, lids, sticks and spades to create the sounds of drums, maracas, drums and symbols … allowing the kids to deliver some spectacular performances of some frozen favourites and some rock classics. Entertainment that is kind to the planet … great!
Last night our little chefs created their very own pizzeria restaurant! We started by making the dough by adding the ingredients and then making a big ball to roll out to make a crispy, delicious base for our yummy toppings! We chopped up some juicy tomatoes and also some courgettes that we grew ourselves in our polytunnel … making it even more scrumptious!
While our pizzas were turning golden brown in the oven, we did some artwork. The kids had a slice of pizza to draw (one to resemble their favourite pizza ever … and one to resemble what they thought the healthiest pizza ever was ). We got some very impressive ideas and we were happy to see that the kids were using the knowledge they have gained from coming to our classes when adding ingredients.
Great fun and some great cooking skills too!
This morning we were graced with beautiful weather for our weekly nurture group session. I collected the kids from Beith primary at 9.30am who were super excited to come and play in our dens and explore the garden.
The walk down to the astro involved some counting challenges with Dean earning a prize for getting the answer right through his dedication to the challenge and stern concentration. When we reached the gates the kids were given 5 mins free play and then we made our way onto the pitches to play some exciting games. One of the games we played was worms which involves the ‘birds’ collecting worms to take back to their nest, dodging the crows who steal the worms!! Everyone was a good sport and did well but I was even more impressed with the next game which involved kids passing a ball to each other through cones on their head. They demonstrated great team work, brilliant cooperation and impressive concentration!
After all that hard work we made our way back to school … in a different fashion. We made a human train through hoops and I was so pleased with how the kids worked together and concentrated on the task the whole 15 min walk to the gates! Everyone then enjoyed a well earned sweetie to say well done for their efforts before heading off for playtime in the sun.
Congratulations to Taylor Mackie for earning her playmaker award last night. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this award, it involves kids taking part in sessions that develop good leadership skills, building up to the planning and delivery of a session independently as the session leader.
Taylor has ben planning her session carefully for a few weeks and was excited to get her chance to explain it to the others. Taylor did really well dividing the group into teams and providing them with their team bands and took time explaining the rules of the game. The rules are a bit similar to football with a few twists like the goalie being in their own teams goals to help the goal get into the box and turning the box up to prevent the other team getting it back out.
Taylor did well in remembering all of her leadership skills including effective communication, inclusion, fairness and confidence. She delegated responsibilities well too such as setting up equipment which was essential for the success of the game. This session was very creative and everyone enjoyed it.
Well done Taylor!
Congratulations to Derren Robin who earned his playmaker award last night with his interesting game of ‘kickball’. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this award, it is connected to the Sports leader award and involves kids taking part in several sessions learning good leadership skills, progressing on to learning how to plan and deliver a session to a group independently as the session leader.
Derren’s game started with a similar set up to rounders, with players at different bases throughout the playing field. Derren selected teams fairly and directed them to their allocated areas, one team were kicking and one team were fielders ready for the fun to start. The idea was to kick your shot far enough away that you and the other players could make it as far around the field as possible, or even better … get a home run. Derren explained his game well, gave clear instructions and was keen to take feedback at the end. Derren did very well settling disputes over foul play and kept scores in an organised way, he was fair, consistent and inclusive, skills which he recognises as good leadership qualities.
Well done Derren!
Last night the kids arrived with an extra skip in their step, fuelled by ice lollies and sunshine! As the weather was so nice we abandoned the arts and crafts and spent our whole session playing games on the pitch, making the most of every second of it! We began with a new game called ‘worms’ that we learned from Mark our sports development manager that involves relaying, dodge balling and tigging all in one game as birds have to collect worms for their nests and avoid being caught by the crow! This game caused hilarity with different rounds seeing different winners demonstrating survival of the fittest in our eco system.
We then played some games which involved teamwork such as passing ball on a cone on our heads along a line, requiring great team skills, coordination skills and concentration!
We finished up by enjoying some lovely soup as a reward for our great sporting efforts before some of the kids made their way to the strawberry fair.
Great night, great fun!
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- head to head stand off for the champion title
This morning we had lots of fun in the sun playing dodgeball! This game is like no other game of dodgeball though … it is much faster, involves everyone having a ball and relies on your tagger getting tagged to get you back in … confused??
There was fierce competition (and not just from the children) which involved dodging some good shots and some head to head stand offs but in the end Callum was crowned the dodgeball champion taking Emily out with a bomber shot!
The walk to school was full of excitement as some of our kids were preparing for their school trip to the beach. We hope their breakfast gives them enough energy to build the biggest sandcastles and jump the biggest waves!
Can’t wait to hear all about it tomorrow!
You will all be familiar with our Eco project by now … and last night helped our kids add another layer of knowledge about green living.
The session started with recycling some old CDs into decorative art for our eco hut. We learned all about where the CDs would have gone otherwise and how landfill can contribute to global warming. I am always impressed with their creativity and also their solutions for reusing scrap materials, things I might never have come up with without their wild imaginations!
Next we made some art, getting close to nature by using pencils to create the pattern from tree trunks which we cut into pretty shapes. By helping kids feel a sense of connection to the natural environment we hope to help them make decisions based on their appreciation of, and desire to sustain the planet.
We finished by playing an interesting game I learned on a sustainable development course in Gloucester in which the kids are put in pairs with one person blindfolded. Their partner then leads them around a garden space letting them discover things through smell, sound, touch and taste. This game always provides interesting results because we usually interpret the world through sight mostly. If you get the chance to try this then please do, a great way to experience your surroundings!
Last night team BCDT got their gladrags and sparkly shoes on and travelled up to Edinburgh for the SCVO Scottish Charity Awards 2015 at the Assembly Rooms.
We still can’t quite believe we won the Celebrating Communities category and were all thrilled when they announced Beith Trust as the winners. Alex took to the stage for our acceptance speech and did a remarkably good job:
“Thank you very much to everybody who has nominated us and voted for us! None of the work at Beith Trust would have been possible without the hard work, commitment and enthusiasm of our volunteers, directors, staff and the fantastic support of the community. We are absolutely delighted to be here and hope everyone has a great night, thank you!”
Paul Cardwell from Third Force News says “The charity triumphed after impressing the judges with its efforts to improve the mental and physical fitness of its local community.” You can check out his article here.
We are so grateful to everyone involved in this charity – it would not have been possible without you all and this is just the first step in getting our wee town on the map. Three cheers for Beith!
