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

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!!

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!

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!!

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!

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!

Yesterday our amazing little chefs were surprised to find out how delicious apple and cheese muffins could be! This turned out to be a messy recipe with flour a-flying, eggs a-cracking and apples hardly making it into the mixture, ending up in tummy’s instead!

We were very impressed with how the skills have developed over the last few weeks with our little chefs  needing little assistance in creating their culinary masterpieces. When the mixture was ready and baking away nicely in the oven we had some time to learn a bit about where our food comes from. This week we were learning about different types of cheese and where they come from in Scotland including Arran, the Orkney Islands and Lockerbie, places we located on a map of Scotland. Then we watched a video all about how cheese is made,  who knew so much effort went into making it!

It was well worth it though, the muffins came out perfectly and the smell wafted through the whole community centre proving how brilliant these little masterchefs really are!

Yesterday our amazing little chefs were surprised to find out how delicious apple and cheese muffins could be! This turned out to be a messy recipe with flour a-flying, eggs a-cracking and apples hardly making it into the mixture, ending up in tummy’s instead!

We were very impressed with how the skills have developed over the last few weeks with our little chefs  needing little assistance in creating their culinary masterpieces. When the mixture was ready and baking away nicely in the oven we had some time to learn a bit about where our food comes from. This week we were learning about different types of cheese and where they come from in Scotland including Arran, the Orkney Islands and Lockerbie, places we located on a map of Scotland. Then we watched a video all about how cheese is made,  who knew so much effort went into making it!

It was well worth it though, the muffins came out perfectly and the smell wafted through the whole community centre proving how brilliant these little masterchefs really are!

Soup group was packed full of fun last night! We started by adding some colour to the trees with decorated recycled bicycle wheels, demonstrating the children’s creativity.

We then played an educational game with Alex which involved searching for objects and testing whether they would sink or swim with some interesting discoveries made!

After all that fun we headed onto the pitch for some playmaker activities where some of the kids got a step closer to earning their award with games involving coordination, balance, teamwork and good communication. Amy then taught us a cool rhyme that she learned at her recent 9 day course on volunteering and youth work in Gloucester where she spent the time learning with 30 other people from all over Europe. The rhyme was called Gouley Gouley and had some actions that tested our memories and the next game (the colour challenge) tested our flexibility where the leader instructed the kids to stand in a circle and place different hands and feet on different colours on people’s clothing, creating what can only be described as a human tangle.

The session then ended with soup on the campfire with thanks to Alison Nobel and some yummy snacks from Erin’s mum  and we were joined by a little frog who wanted to take part in the campfire games.

Really nice to see some new faces this week too! See you all next week

This morning we enjoyed some of our favourite cereals while we sang along to some country and soul … the kids asked me to put on my good tunes before mark had the chance to put his on … he is known for some interesting music choices and some very very bad singing!

After breakfast we played what seems to be the favourite game … hide and seek in the woods where Ryan and Esme had us all puzzled with their genius hiding places! The garden space is a great place for hide and seek with plenty of trees and dens to hide in and behind.

In true breakfast club fashion we started the walk to school with a challenge … toady’s was to do the whole walk to school in complete silence with the first one to speak the loser as well as walking up the hill backwards! Everyone completed the challenge despite the hilarity of trying to communicate to each other through gestures and we were all relieved to get to the school gate and talk again … to wish each other a happy day!

Looking forward to next week!

Well done to the all weather troopers who came along to soup group last night and didn’t stop smiling despite the rain!

The session started with the biggest word search we have ever seen! The kids were split into 2 teams: Boys who were the lightening god apple team and the girls who were the purple thunder team were against each other and against the clock with each team member having 1 minute to try to find a word before swapping with the next person on their side, competing to find different countries. We found many countries from all over the world but the boys won with a decisive 8:4 win!

Next we made art from wax, and we were very impressed with the level of creativity (see pics to be wowed)!

Next, we made our very own bubble machine (well … we made it from sticks, string and good old fairy liquid!) Kaleb showed some great talent in making the biggest bubbles and Sam was very kind in showing kiera how to use it!

You are also probably wondering why we asked you to bring glass jars … Karen Ronald kindly gave us some delicious baguettes and we made our own butter from cream. You do this by shaking whipped cream in a jar (take care – your arm will get tired!) and then we added some wild garlic and enjoyed some delicious garlic bread and marshmallows (which the kids earned by telling us a fact about one of the countries found earlier on the wordsearch … very interesting exercise! ha ha See you all next week!

Recently Beith Trust was invited by University West of Scotland to give a presentation at “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” an event held by SPDN (Social Pedagogy Development Network) at the Edinburgh Conference Centre about Soup Group.

Soup group is a local playgroup where children can come on a Wednesday night to socialize and play with other children in their age group. During soup group children take part in fun games, activities, make crafts, then we all sit round the camp fire and eat soup before getting in some more play time before hang to go home.

Participants at the event were very enthusiastic about Soup Group and it’s social impact and many participates described Soup Group as “Inspirational”. A lot of positive attention for Beith Trust and other organizations who strive to emulate similar activities.