Heenah’s favourite song is the one about the new teacher who confuses her class by getting them to say dog instead of dug, sparrow rather than speug and dove instead of doo. “It is very Scottish,” she said, “and the words are nice and fast.”

Amy prefers slower songs. Her favourite is “Down to the Sea”, a plaintive poem about the disappearance of shipbuilding on the Clyde. “It sounds beautiful when you sing it slowly,” she says.

Heenah and Amy have been learning a repertoire of Scottish songs with the rest of their P5 classmates at Garnetbank Primary school in Glasgow. On Tuesday morning they will be part of a massed choir in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at the Primary 4-7 children’s concert organised as part of the ninth annual Celtic Connections festival, which started this week.

More than 20,000 Glasgow schoolchildren in the past three years have benefited from the festival education programme and the involvement of a range of singers, instrumentalists and dancers who have delivered the message that the traditional and indigenous music of Scotland is both accessible and enjoyable. Garnetbank Primary has been involved in the programme from the start and has the advantage of being only a short walk from the Royal Concert Hall, the focal point for the UK’s premier celebration of Celtic culture, which is one of the largest indoor music festivals in the world.

The school is one of four that Haddington-born Gill Bowman, one half of the duo MacAlias, is visiting to spread the Celtic music message, one that is firmly rooted in the oral tradition. Her workshops are funded by the Educational Institute of Scotland, one of the organisations which provides partnership funding for the programme to complement the Scottish Arts Council’s grant.

Whether Gill is teaching comedy songs or ballads, she sees her brief as ensuring that children can sing songs off by heart “so that everyone can join in from beginning to end”. It is not a case of learning by rote. A love song is learned by using a call and response approach until the class can sing it by themselves.

Sometimes children are encouraged to make up rhymes and adapt well known tunes. Garnetbank’s P4 have their own version of “Three Craws” about three cats and P5‘s version of the Matt McGinn classic “Red Yo-yo” includes the line “The queen got a scare so she phoned Tony Blair and he went on telly and cried ... have you seen a red yo-yo I”.

Most of the songs are ensemble and sung to Gill’s guitar accompaniment but, in keeping with the oral tradition, there is always at least one unaccompanied song.

Kate Macdonald, who is in charge of Garnetbank’s P5s, appreciates the fact that many of the songs link into Scottish history, such as the tradition of shipbuilding on the Clyde or the building of the Forth railway bridge (“Diamonds across the Forth”). She also likes the variation in types of song, from frivolous to serious.

Primary 4 teacher Isabel Curnyan, who is Garnetbank’s music teacher, is in no doubt about the value of the Celtic Connection connection. “It has been super having input from different people through the educational programme and attending events in the concert hall.

“In this school we are talking about many children who are Scots from other ethnic backgrounds (73 per cent of the 190 pupils). They get a lot of enrichment from the aspects of Scottish culture which are on offer and they love the singing and dancing.

“Last year we had visits from a teacher of step dancing and at the children’s concert our pupils were dancing in the aisles of the concert hall to the music of the French-Canadian group Beolas.”

Nancy Nicolson, the Celtic Connections education officer, says that 97 per cent of participating schools feel that the visiting specialists have provided a range of experiences that have increased pupils’ understanding of Glasgow and Scotland. The announcement of a further Scottish Arts Council grant, enabling the delivery of a new extended project over the next 30 months, is music to her ears.

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Buchanan Street, tel 0141 353 8000 www.grch.comRoyalhall_eventsceltic.htmOther schools concerts: Nursery-P3, Jan 28, 11am; Jan 29, 11am