Nursery and primary 1 activity

What is your child’s favourite nursery rhyme or song? Which ones do they like to sing with you? Talk with your child about their favourite nursery rhymes and songs.

Spend time together choosing a toy, household item, or picture you have drawn that is related to the rhymes or songs you have discussed. For example, for ‘Tha sinn a’ dol dhan sù’, find a toy animal or draw a picture of one.

Find a small bag to make into a ‘song bag’. This could be a schoolbag a shopping bag, or even a pillowcase, and hide all the items or drawings that go along with the songs inside.

Take turns with your child to close your eyes, reach inside the bag and then sing the rhyme or song you have chosen!

If you would like more ideas on sharing rhymes with your child then Gaelic Bookbug from the Scottish Book Trust have an app, a rhyme library and online Bookbug sessions (gaidhlig.scot).

Primary 2, 3, and 4 activity

Children enjoy having fun with words. This is a guessing game, for which you will need paper and a pencil.

Choose some words in Gaelic that your child has been using in conversations or in their reading. It may be words that your child has been memorising from other learning activities. You can do this game with phrases and questions too.

Tell your child how many letters are in the word you have chosen and draw a short line for each letter in the word.

Ask your child to guess the letters in the word. They get a point for each letter rightly guessed. If they guess a wrong letter, you get a point.

Ask your child to add other rules to the game, for example, you can set a limit on the number of letters you can guess or have a specific amount of time to guess the word. Encourage your child to be creative in making new rules for this game.

Primary 5, 6, and 7 activity

This activity will help you remember how to say you have or have not done something, and how to ask someone if they have done something. For this, you are given a command and can choose how to present your answers.

Example: Dùin an doras

Ceist: An do dhùin thu an doras?

Freagairt: Dhùin mi an doras. Cha do dhùin mi an doras.

More examples to try

1. Suidh sìos
2. Seas
3. Gabh glainne uisge
4. Ith briosgaid
5. Fuirich aig an taigh
6. Nigh do làmhan
7. Èist ri BBC Alba
8. Fosgail an uinneag
9. Cluich ball-coise
10. Coimhead an telebhisean

Next steps

• write other commands
• change them to ask a question, and give the yes and no answer
• make up a game or a poster to help remember these rules