Wonderful Wetland Centre

I have recently fallen in love with Barnes. My aunt has lived there as long as I can remember but I have only just ventured out of her house to see the gorgeous surrounding area. It is really close to where I live and I thought that the Wetland Centre would be a lovely outing with the duck-loving toddler. Now growing up I had to do more than my fair share of bird-watching as my Dad was a big fan. I love wildlife and have a strong interest in natural history, I'm sure encouraged by my Dad's enthusiasm but a bird-watcher I am not. But I am enjoying sharing all the new discoveries my little one is making. The WWT centre is brilliant for this -it really is a zoo for ducks (and other bird-life) so it is really easier to negotiate. The birds are all in plain view and you don't feel the need to constantly shush the little ones. It is completely push-chair friendly and there is massive of free parking.

We had a really lovely day, and the little one enjoyed the children's activity room, we are still too small for Explore, the outdoor learning area. I will absolutely go again but I do have a couple of tiny thoughts....

1. It is quite expensive- it was near enough £10 for the day (and this is with the toddler being free at the minute), having said that to join for a year is £36 which works out really reasonable so if I go again I will join, you can reclaim the money of a visit from the membership if done within 30 days.
2. This one is probably my own issue as I have come to realise I am a play snob. The children's room is fun and as I said my little one loved it but... to me it felt a bit like walking into a fairground, yes the activities were sort of linked to ecological things but I'm pretty sure most of that was lost on the kids. I think for such a lovely place this area could have been a bit more low key and allowed the children some more hands on activities with natural objects and problem solving. Kids enjoy those opportunities just as much as the more fairground game activities.

But overall I did love it and I love having outside places to take my son, I also noticed they run quite a lot of family activities which I am looking forward to checking out.
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Lovely Long Nose Puppets again.

After the lovely 'Penguin' show we were really looking forward to going to see "Flyaway Katie" at the Lyric in Hammersmith. And we were not disapointed, there is something so lovely and magical about the handmade feel of all the puppets and sets. The story is an embellished version of Polly Dunbar's book, and just like "Penguin" features music by Tom Gray of Gomez.

After the show they had a 'meet the puppets' session which all the kids loved. The puppeteers were brilliant with kids and kept the magic going.

It was my first time to the Lyric too, and I think its a lovely venue. We were on the second floor which was great as there is a cafe as well as a roof terrace for a little bit of room for the kids. They have a really good program for families and I will definitely being keeping an eye on what is on.

Syon Park Tropical Zoo

The little one is mega keen on animals and has been imagining "snap snaps" (obviously his word for crocodile/alligator or similar) in all sorts of places, especially the pile of logs outside the site manager's shed. So I wanted to try and find him a real one to visit. (Am very excited about taking him to London Zoo but waiting on the new Penguin beach). So after some googling I came across the Syon Park Tropical Zoo. This is close to us with free parking and obviously surrounded with open space so if the little boy needed to run he could. When I say run imagine a drunk very camp man attempting to run, bless, he puts lots of energy in and all limbs seem to move more and faster but his actual forward motion seems to change very little.
Anyway headed there last Saturday and had a really lovely day. It is a rescue centre and has a lovely eccentric feel about it. There are cats lounging on the desk and in the gift shop and the whole thing is in a slightly ramshackle greenhouse.


We arrived just in time for the first meet the animals session, which was fab. The toddler got to feed some tortoises, touch lizards and a Cayman- which definitely counts as a snap snap.


The guy running the session was lovely and I actually learnt stuff! My little one has a slight history of being a wuss but he was remarkably brave with all the creatures. The only time he got upset was when a locust was put on the floor and promptly gobbled up by the lizard, he was not a fan of that.
This on the other hand he was fine with...


We had a lovely time exploring the rest of the little zoo which is tiny but has enough interesting creatures and knowledgable staff to keep everyone entertained.
This massive guy was just hanging out on his own outside the gift shop.




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Suction cups take 2...

Oh I really am hoping (a lot) that I manage to make this work as I think it could be fun. My whole idea with my suction cups is to create a sort of water play construction kit. But I need to remember that my baby is only 17 months old, so need to remember to use baby steps, I think I'm still a bit programmed into Nursery+ age children.

But step 2 on this project was to buy some pipe bits, quick trip to B&Q to get some connecting parts and then to find some clear pipes, which I found from a very lovely company Trent Plastics, who were very understanding of my complete cluelessness. But I found the tube I wanted and they cut it into the size pieces I wanted.

When it arrived I was too excited to wait until bathtime to have a go and discovered that the suction cups worked brilliantly on his cupboard door. So we had a bit of a play with some fluffy craft balls....

My little one was really engaged, but the way the tubes fitted and the very light fluffy balls meant that they kept getting stuck, but I felt encouraged that he was interested.

Next Bathtime...

A gorgeous show for the tiny people (and I loved it too)

I had such a lovely morning at the Polka Theatre (I was not expecting it to go well as my Little one had woken up at silly o'clock and had tried to fall asleep on the much too short bus ride). But once we arrived and he got to play on the rocking horses and stare at other little ones he was fine.

The show was called Drum and this version was aimed at the under 2s. I was a tiny bit sceptical at the beginning when one of the performers had do to a lot of slightly exaggerated dancing, mainly as this would be my own worst nightmare, but once my grown-up head fell off I was as captivated as all the little ones.

Images from the Oily Cart Website

The show was based around 3 massive drums, they were used as instruments as well as projection screens and as play areas. Everyone is drawn in by the strong drumbeats but they seem to have special magic powers over children. The whole show was so well thought out and multi-sensory but I especially loves the play session at the end, I sort of don't want to spoil it for anyone that might go but it was lovely. I will definitely look out for further productions by this theatre company (Oily Cart) and will continue to love the Polka for the fab things they book.

One thing I have already stolen from the show is a contraption they used during the bubble blowing section. They intially had normal bubble blowers and then they came out and blew bubble towers on the children's hands. All the grown ups cooed- must be just the change from normal bubbles, but its megga easy. It was just a short tube with a piece of muslin stretched over the end and secured with an elastic band.

We had lots of fun playing with it outside as well as using it to fill the bath with bubbles. There was one slight hiccup when the toddler wanted to have a go and sucked really hard intsead! After some slightly revolting noises everything was fine, but I kept expecting him to burp bubbles.

My bathtime revolution!!

I am very excited about bathtime! This has been a general feeling since the little one stopped screaming his way through it, but is more especially true at the moment. It is all down to a random find, one of those times when you come across a selection of objects, for which you have no understanding of why they are in your house. As a primary school teacher I do often find weird stuff, normally rubbish that I've put in a pocket to throw away but kept, anyway this time I found a whole bunch of little suction cups. Well this has completely changed bathtime...I am going to try and share although confused about the etiquette of baby bath photos and by the fact that my photos are rubbish Iphone photos as always- well I guess you'll get the general idea.

When I first found them- I boringly thought they might be good for tidying away but then thought this was much more fun....

They have instilled a new lease of life into the stacking cups- and is obviously all good Knowledge and understanding of the World stuff (for any other EYFS geeks out there, it's the English early years guidelines yawn).

With my new bathtime vigour I remembered these

That we used to use all the time in water play in the Nursery, I got them and the image fromAmazon. (I attempt where possible to be organic with the little fella so not entirely sure how soaking him in chemicals fits into that but hey...) My first go with these with the toddler was a resounding flop, my own fault entirely, it was a case of way too much all at the same time, bubbles, flashing ball, coloured water woo! And I may have possibly attempted to put the fizzing tablets into sealed bottles until my OH pointed out I had created a bomb. But using them alongside the magic suction cups worked a treat (even if my chosen colour made it look like a weird baby slasher movie).

Adding the water to the fizzy tablet in the pot.

Trying to figure out what is going on.

Trying to catch the magic water in his bottle.

Trying to catch it with his toes, bless.

I have plans for the next step of the suction cups- but this is maybe where my making skills let down my over excited ideas skills, but I think it should be the easiest thing in the world but you will soon find out how wrong/right I might be.

Inspired by "Elf on the Shelf"

Now it was a while ago so I can't remember where I came across 'Elf on the Shelf", but I read the review and thought it was a cute idea. I have never read the book so may have completely misunderstood, but what I think it is is an toy elf that gets delivered to you with the idea that he is real and at night-time magics back to Santa to tell on you! Then there are clues as to where you can find him the next day, as he will have reappeared somewhere new. I think this is cute and anything I can do to add to the magic of my little ones childhood seems like a good plan to me. So I kind of had my idea of how we could make our own family tradition inspired by it.

My plan is the weekend closest to the start of December we will go to the woods near our house armed with a very special letter from Santa to the toddler. It will explain that he has a new elf and he is learning his job and is going to come and spend the time before Christmas with us to make sure we are getting in the Christmas spirit, but that he will have to go home every night to sleep and catch up on his elf training. The problem is he doesn't know how to find our house so we have to search for him, with a few clues as to his whereabouts.

Every now and then I have a look for an elf that I think is cute enough (I want him to come back every year and then maybe come back to visit the toddler's toddlers). I have yet to find my elf but during my most recent search I came across this by etsy seller LovingLeeCrafted

I thought it might be cute to have a special doorway that the elf travels back and forward to Santa's grotto through? After a little more looking I found a few more people who make little doors too.

Nothing But Wood makes this cute little actual door.

I haven't quite worked out the how/why we will have to search for him each day but as I am fairly premature I am hoping that inspiration will dawn....