From yoga to plank breaking, Thame play day is a hit with families

FINDING things for the kids to do in the summer holidays is always a challenge. What a treat it was then to be able to visit a children’s play day at the Southern Road recreation ground on Saturday. Not only did it have tasters of lots of activities available to children of all ages, it was free!

Hosted by the Red Kite Children’s Centre, Thame, there was a huge variety of things to do. Toddlers could practise their movement with the obstacles in the Kindergym with older children improving their sporting skills with RugbyTots and Ignite Sport which also included archery. The calm space of the Mini Yoga was in very sharp contrast to the ‘plank’ breaking that children could attempt at the Karate demonstration next door!

Kids could be creative with stalls run by Creation Station making sea creatures, modelling on a massive scale with Orinoco scrap store, natural resource art at the Tetsworth Outdoor Learning Centre and a large graffiti wall. Sparklers playgroup were busy helping children to decorate their own Minion biscuit. If parents were worried about the sugar in any of the sweets some of the stalls were giving away, the Health Bus was on hand to allow children to be dentists and learn all about teeth!

The staff and volunteers at all of the stalls were really friendly with the NCT stall even providing changing facilities and a welcome chair and shade for parents needing to feed their babies. A number of stalls also had play equipment out for the much younger children and babies too.

Despite the outfits being twice the size of my daughter, she was desperate to have a go in the sumo suits – as was I! She was soon distracted by being able to be very loud at the African drumming workshop.

One of the organisers, Melissa Lancashire, posted on the event’s Facebook page that they estimated around 700 families visited the Play Day. This is fantastic news to secure the event’s future. The weather was fantastic and made it very easy to spend a large portion of a Saturday trying a huge range of activities on offer. It would be great to see it permanently on the Thame calendar and allow it to expand. Well done to all of the organisers and volunteers.

SOURCE: Contributed by Kelly Hinton