Our Muddy Ambassador Emily's Event Review
Our marvellous Muddy Ambassador, Emily from Surrey, has shared her highlights from our first ever Muddy Event in the fantastic Farnham Park! Read on to see what happened… Sunday 10th July saw the first ever Muddy Puddles event launching in Surrey and I was delighted to be there with my family to host the session at Farnham Park. Farnham Park provided us with a fantastic location to explore and find out more about wildlife and nature. There are several walks you can do, a huge selection of trees to explore and (new for 2016) an amazing play park complete with a giant wooden spider and a castle. All overlooked by the real ruins of Farnham castle, this park really was the perfect setting for our young explorers. After ticking everyone off at registration we had a brief introduction and guided everyone through the great goody bag which contained a voucher for future purchases, balloon, pencil and some activity sheets. Our first activity of the day was ‘Letters from the Wild’, a great game that could be played in any setting, not just a park. The children had to find items in the park beginning with the letters from the sheet and then collect bits of twig, leaves and other items to make their own initials. We had half an hour to hunt around the park and then the group met up to show off what they had found. Mother nature had obviously been reading up on the brand and provided us with plenty of rain, wind and sun to ensure that our little adventurers got to put their wellies and raincoats to the test, but this didn’t stop them. We had some brilliant answers for the letters from ‘acorn’ to ‘rain’, ‘twig’ and ‘mushroom’ and even a few insects that came along for the journey, the children were really getting into exploring the park. They had collected enough material to spell out countless initials and Benjamin managed to spell out his entire name whilst Flynn found a brilliant stick that was the perfect ‘y’ shape for his name. After enjoying a well earned pack of bear paws we set off again, this time in hunt of our favourite tree. Now this may seem like quite a simple thing to do but actually Farnham park is home to a huge variety of trees so choosing our the best tree was a tricky task. The children had to take a good look and then write their favourite thing about the tree onto a small label before taking a picture besides the tree. This was my favourite activity because it really got the children thinking about the different type of trees and looking more closely at what was growing on them. On our return we discovered more about the trees in Farnham park. Amber chose her tree because it had the same name as her classroom, and Isabella and Evelyn picked a pine tree because it reminded them of a giant Christmas tree! We had horse chestnuts and Oak trees a plenty too and lots of children commented on the different shape of leaves that each tree had. Before we knew it it was almost the end of the session and so we split up into two smaller groups to start work on our final piece of artwork for the day – a giant Muddy Puddles sign. Everyone mucked in together which was great to see. We had giant logs being carried across the field, bark carefully scattered to fill the letters and leaves shaped to make the raindrops. The children were immensely pleased of what they had created and stood proudly for photos, just in time for the sun to make an appearance! The session then came to a close, the boots had been expertly covered in mud and hands dirtied from foraging through the leaves, the only thing left to find was when our next session would be running – “very soon I hope” was my reply. We all had a thoroughly enjoyable time and look forward to the next installment of our Muddy Puddles adventure.