Robert Burns resources - early years

Celebrating Robert Burns and Scottish culture

Suggestions for celebrating Robert Burns and Scottish culture with young children.

Burns Night illustrations

A portrait of Rabbie Burns, and a plate of haggis, neeps and tatties, in colour and in black and white, to help your school celebrate the well loved Scottish poet.

Celebrating Robert Burns - an enterprising approach

Ideas and downloads for cross-cutting projects related to Robert Burns. It includes activities mapped to the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence from a Robert Burns World Federation education pack sent to all primary schools in Scotland.

Working on farms

An interactive resource about rural life in 18th-century Scotland from the Scottish History website which could be used to help primary children understand the social and economic context in which Burns was living and writing.

Tam o Shanter

Details of an interactive CD-ROM, produced by Learning and Teaching Scotland, which includes the entire text of the poem; a full sound recording by a professional actor; the poem's characters; and a variety of props and scenes for setting the poem and creating storyboards. Tam o Shanter comes with a comprehensive educational support pack with activities, work schemes and lesson plans.

Scots soundbytes

Scots poems and songs on the 5-14 Special Focus website, several of which have been created and recorded by children. Other poems are read aloud by the authors. As well as the audio and video recordings, there are suggested classroom activities to help children further develop their understanding of Scots and poetry.

Creative responses to music

This Connected magazine article describes how young children's creative responses to the modern Scottish composition 'Maxwell's Reel, with Northern Lights' by Orkney-based composer Sr Peter Maxwell Davies were stimulated by using Windows Media Player visualisations.

Scotland's Culture