Gromit Unleashed

Whilst shopping for Josephs (4.5) school uniform we found ourselves at M&S in The Mall at Cribs Bristol. They didn't have the t-shirt we needed in stock, so we decided to go on the search for a Gromit as I was sure there would be one there. So while making our way to the middle of the shopping centre we stumbled upon the Gromit Unleashed shop & experience on the upper floor. Inside we found our first Gromit 'The Green Gromit'. 

We had lots of fun looking around the experience (suggested donation £1), Joseph loved the rocket, they also had plasticine to make your own Gromit & light boxes to help you draw like the animators. They also had all the DVDs running, if we make it back, I will pop to Starbucks first & let the boys sit on the bean bags & watch some. It was a real shame we were in a bit of a rush as you could spend quite a while there!

We picked up a trail map from the shop & were pointed in the direction of Cath Kidsons 'Antique Rose' who is outside The Mall buy the fountains.

Whilst up in that direction we also found 'The Wild West' at Cribs Causeway Retail Park.

Joseph is so excited about the Gromits & i have a feeling that we will be travelling all over Bristol this summer in search of them. If you would like to find out more take a look at the Gromit Unleashed site here, they also have a fab app for iphones & androids, another time I wish I hadn't chose my Nokia! I love my 12mp camera though! On a sad note I think its a real shame that some of the Gromits have been damaged already.

x Jo x

P.s. Don't forget to enter our great Blackpool Tower ticket competition.

Blackpool Tower Ticket - Competition

After building our Blackpool Tower for the tots100 competition, as a runner up we have been given a pair of tickets to Blackpool Tower. As we live down near Bristol its too far for a day trip so I'm offering the tickets worth £30 each to my lovely readers :-)

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WIN 2 x The Tower Tickets - All inclusive Tower Ticket

The more you see, the more you save with the five amazing Blackpool Tower attractions.
Make your visit to Blackpool a memorable one and visit Blackpool Towers’s five amazing attractions – from the heights of The Blackpool Tower Eye with its breath-taking SkyWalk to the depths of The Blackpool Tower Dungeon.
Don’t forget Blackpool’s all-time favourites Mooky the Clown and Mr Booo still making audiences laugh in The Blackpool Tower Circus.
Why not take a whirl in the spectacular Ballroom and let the kids have the play time of their life at Jungle Jim’s Children’s Indoor Play

Good Luck,

x Jo x

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Silent Sunday

x Jo x

Messy Play...

I thought it was about time I got around to sharing the rest of the details from the group messy play session that I held. So as well as the paper plate turtle craft (click for more details) we had lots more fun...

Painting with cars on a big scale (the boys have done this at home before but on a smaller scale see here)

Joseph(4.5) enjoying painting with his friends.

Jelly frog pond green & blue jelly made with gelatin & food colouring, as blue jelly doesn't seam to exist!

This was a very popular station!

Dinosaur small world in an Argos paddling pool.

With play dough to make footprints. This was similar to our Dinoland we made a while back.

Coloured rice sensory box (apologies for the poor picture!)

Daniel (3) enjoying the rice with his friends.

In our other pool we had our button & cotton real threading. With all the other activities on offer this was more popular than I was expecting!

All the children enjoyed the hour, especially my boys, so over the summer holidays I have decided to hold more sessions for the public wish me luck!

x Jo x

Silent Sunday

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I is for ....

Ice Cream!

We have had lots of fun looking at the letter I for ice & ice cream. So we ate lots of ice cream & ice lollies. However not as much as we would have liked, as our freezer decided to break & melt all our ice cream & some of our food! I was also planning on doing a ice sensory box however the lack of ice maker/freezer & poor weather means we didn't get around to it, but will try to later in the summer.

We also made these fab rice pictures at a craft session we went to.

And Daniel (3) did some colouring to put up on the wall with our other letters.

We are really looking forward to moving on to J for Joseph & jelly!

x Jo x

Paper Plate Turtle Craft

We recently held a group messy play session at a local hall for some friends & this was the craft I set up, I will be writing another post soon with all the other details. 

Above is my turtle, he is made using 1/2 a yellow paper plate, green card, a wiggly eye. He is decorated using green lentils & green egg shell. 

Once I had washed dried & crushed the egg shell I put it in to a zip lock bag with a little surgical spirit (rubbing alcohol) and green food colouring.
Our green food colouring isn't very strong (from lidls) so even with quite a bit the shell was only yellow so I added a bit of blue & it was a much better colour. Once it had dried out it gave a lovely 2 tone natural effect.

Here are the boys making their turtles, Joseph (4.5) even made a second one with 2 heads!

Everyone enjoyed making turtles & we had lots of variations, we have lots of green egg shell & lentils left over so expect to see them used in another craft in the future!

x Jo x

P.S. Don't forget to enter our competition to win a pair of bandana dribble bibs handmade by me.