Your Charity Lottery teddy Lotte shares its adventures of helping children through music.

My mum plays Your Charity Lottery in aid of the hospice and has done for a number of years now. She wanted to give to a local charity that helps people in our community and couldn’t think of a better place than Dove House. In fact she also raises money every Christmas by knitting tiny little red and green stockings and filling them with a little chocolate Santa and a candy cane. I take them to work and the money we raise we give to the hospice. This year she has been quite unwell so has been unable to go out so has made a head start on the stockings ready for December. It occupies her time and gives her purpose.

Each year my mum receives a little teddy called Lotte bear to celebrate her continued support of Your Charity Lottery and each year she gives it to me. I work for Hull Music Service and go into schools to provide sessions for looked after children, children with disabilities such as special educational and behavioral needs who might need help focusing and listening and those children school feels would benefit from a bit of extra support via the musical route.

A session provides devoted, regular weekly time with an adult who will listen, nurture, and help the child to express themselves individually or in a small group through musical and imaginative creative activities. There’s singing, dancing, movement, listening, playing instruments, improvising, artwork and imaginative play using themed objects and scarves. Sessions focus on developing personal skills and improving well-being through music and imagination (no screens). Each week we pick a theme and the bears are incorporated to make it fun. The bears help the children learn but in a unique way.

Often the children come into the session and the first thing they do is look for the Lotte teddies who are usually in a different place each week, often ready with a percussion instrument in their paws!! Sometimes Lotte is swung in a handheld scarf swing, in time to music – it’s not uncommon for the teddy to end up swung into the air when the music gets louder and the swinging gets more enthusiastic, which results in a lot of laughter! They are involved in making scenes to match the weekly theme e.g. wear a bandana in pirate week or having a picnic in Bear Week. The Lotte bears are also cradled to ‘quiet time’ lullaby music.


 

 

One of the children shared with me that “If you’re having a rough day you can talk about it and cuddle the teddies and you can feel better.” Another child shared “The teddies are cuddly, and they join in the music”.

Sometimes I use the teddies as icebreakers and Lotte sometimes becomes the child’s voice until they develop the confidence to sing.

Each session is very pupil lead and I find it so rewarding, you notice the children improving each week. It gives them time to express themselves, regulate, and have fun.

I use the Lotte Bears to help children as my mum helps the hospice by playing Your Charity Lottery. It is lovely how her supporting our community is also helping local children.