We have had a lovely few months at The Yard Edinburgh and as the dark nights are arriving quicker, we have all been getting involved in what has become one of our most loved games at The Yard; hide and seek in the dark. Over the last few months we have lots of amazing activities happening at The Yard, including our wonderful Bonfire night at the start of November. Our Bonfire night has become an annual tradition of ours as many of our families find it difficult to access Guy-Fawkes night or bonfire nights, especially if they involve fireworks. The playteam set up a huge bonfire in the middle of one of our sandpits and we served hot soup, bread, tea and coffee (served in our Vegware hot cups), to warm everyone up!
As soon as bonfire night was over, we started to think about Christmas at The Yard. Due to popular demand we also now hold four Christmas parties for our members; an early years party, three parties over Friday 13 December and Saturday 14 December, plus our new Santa’s Grotto on Sunday’s when we are open to the public. With the help of our fantastic corporate teams and volunteers, our indoor and outdoor space starts to feel very festive and our Solardome is transformed into Santa’s Grotto. For our four member parties, the chair of our board becomes our very own Santa and he has been taking part in an eight week Signalong course so that he can use Christmas signs to communicate with non-verbal children.
All our parties have 60 children in each and we have Christmas entertainment inside and outside, including: face painting, piñata activities and Christmas music/dancing. Christmas time can be a very difficult time for our families with change of routine, bad weather, more noise and more lights it can be very unsettling for our families. Having The Yard open for our family sessions over the Christmas holidays means that we can continue to offer a non-judgemental space where families can relax and be themselves. We are enormously grateful to have the support of the Vegware community over the Christmas holidays and we wish you all a very happy festive period.
