Bush Babies

2years 212 days

We've had such a fab day today and found a great new activity in the process, which is right up our proverbial street. Harrison, Aiden and family picked us up this morning and we drove to their grandparents house, as the forecast wasnt brilliant so we planned an indoor picnic there. The kids ran like nutters after the car journey before a carpet picnic.

From there, we went not far away to our first Bush Babies session, a gruffalo special. This guy, who was fantastic with the children, runs preschool and toddler activity walks. Ours was 2 hours long through the forestry. He started off with the story, and "team building" little activity. He put camoflage cream on the kids who wanted it, before our team set off for the first mini task, followed by the others doing theirs. Each task centred around finding one of the story characters, following trails, looking for clues, burrowing in dens. He had the characters on wires for some of it, so the snake danced and the owl flew.

The children went over log bridges, through muddy ditches, followed more trails, until we got to the "gruffalo's lair", where there were some more activities. The over 3's helped make "fire" using flints and cotton wool, whilst the under 3s had trowels and magnifying glasses to bughunt. We all then went in a big teepee for toasted marshmallows, hot chocolate and freshly made popcorn on a (very carefully contained and controlled) wood stove.

I spent a lot of my teenage years camping out, exploring the woods and stuff and Katie loves being outdoors, she had an absolute blast, so we were both loving it. The children played for ages in the woods after the session was over, taking themselves right into the thickest growth of plants, through the muddy ditches, the biggest puddles. It was fabulous!