So we were excited, but how was the Shropshire Kids Festival in the end? Well, the little one is tucked up safely in bed and I expect she will sleep until next week.
I was actually really pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to navigate the Kids Festival at the Telford International Centre. I was expecting lots of queuing. But in reality, there is SO MUCH to do, that you don’t have to wait very long, if at all, for anything.
My Small is around 2.5 at this point, and even at her age there was more to do than we could possibly fit in. Obviously with the little ones, overtiredness and overstimulation is real, so we were trying to keep a balance between fun, upbeat activities, gentler crafting and making and also find time to fit in some of the performances. It’s very hard to have it all!
What did we do?
But, to give you an idea of the awesome array of stuff on offer, this is roughly what we managed in about four hours, with a break for her packed lunch (then we went to the pub and fed ourselves obvs.)
- Playing with the ride on diggers and cars.
- Many inflatables – bouncy castles, slides and even a Mama-baby tag team (twice!) through the inflatable bin lorry assault course. Which certainly got my heart rate up.
- Diddy Dance class with drumming, ribbon dance, hula hoops and more.
- Tea cups, bumper cars, carousel.
- Circus skills.
- Clay making, rock painting.
- Learning to be a beekeeper, then learning to be a vet later on.
- Feeding the alpacas, marvelling at the sheep and lambs. Being scared by a real dinosaur.
- Silent disco.
- Hanging out with the Telford Tigers and their mascot, Roary.
- Giant board games.
- Free treats like Peppa and Duggee magazines and lots of sweets.
The Shropshire Kids Festival Lowdown
All of this was included in the ticket price, we didn’t have to dip in our pockets for anything. Obviously bigger kids will be able to go on more stuff too, like the giant slides and inflatable slalams. But we had more than enough to keep us occupied.
A really fun family day out, and beautifully organised. I like that kids get a wristband on entry that you write your mobile number on in case you get separated. And when we came to leave, we had to hang on for a little while as there was a missing child alert, so the doors had been closed while it was resolved. I thought that was a real testament to the professionalism of the staff running the event with kids’ safety paramount in mind.
If you want to go tomorrow (or next year I guess!) then head to shropshirekidsfest.co.uk for more information.
We were given a pass for the purposes of review, but my opinions remain unshakably my own. Sorry.