Burns Night, a celebration of Scottish National Bard Robert Burns, takes place on the 25th of January, and to mark the occasion we thought we would share five fun arts activities you could run with your group to celebrate Burns Night, while achieving some Arts Award criteria!
Read or recite some of Burns’ poetry
There could be no better way to celebrate Burns Night than to explore some of Robert Burns’ poetry with your group. These resources from the Scottish Book Trust could support you with how to introduce and explore poetry and performance poetry to your group. You could also take a look at this BBC Bitesize KS1 interactive activity based around the poem ‘Up in The Morning Early’, for a fun introduction.
Maybe your group could have a go at writing their own Burns inspired poems using Scots dialogue, there are a good collection of resources based around writing in Scots here. Perhaps your group could share their poems in a class assembly, or group presentations?
Design your own tartan
What could be more Scottish than designing your own tartan? You could discuss the history of Scottish tartan with your group, and look at some examples of tartan, before creating your own designs.
You could paint your own tartan by creating a grid of different lengths and widths. You could take a look at these templates, and then paint in vertical and horizontal lines. You should use three or four colours, with one colour as a base colour, and then repeat the pattern you create.
Or you could weave a tartan from woven paper or card, this how to guide can help with how to do this. You will need different coloured card, pencils, scissors, a ruler and some glue.
Dance a Ceilidh!
Learning a Ceilidh dance is a great way to celebrate Burns Night and learn more about traditional Scottish culture, as well as being a really fun activity to do with your group. You could take a look at these instructions for different dances, or follow these helpful video guides. If you are using this activity for Arts Award don’t forget to take lots of pictures of your group participating.
Make your own bagpipes!
No Burns Nights celebration would be complete without the sound of bagpipes, from piping in the haggis at the beginning of supper, to accompanying the traditional recitation of Burns famous poem ‘Address to a Haggis’, the bagpipe is an essential part of Burns Night. So why not ask your group to create their own (pretend) paper bagpipes, following these instructions. You will need some craft paper, glue, felt tip pens, paper towel rolls, elastic bands, string and some paper bags. Maybe you could listen to some bagpipe music while you are making your bagpipes to really set the scene!
Sing some Scottish folk songs
Introduce your group to traditional Scottish folk songs for children, such as Ali Bali Bee, Marie's Wedding, Katie Bairdie, The Three Craws, and not forgetting of course Auld Lang Syne written by Robert Burns. Again you could perform these in an assembly or performance evening as part of your Burns Night celebrations.
We hope you enjoy these suggestions and have a great time celebrating Burns Night.
The activities suggested here are best suited to Discover Part A and Explore Part A and C, please do make sure to refer to your adviser toolkit for evidence requirements for these parts.
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