National Play Day - Victoria Square, Bolton

So the school holidays are here, and to be honest I've not got two pennies to rub together! As you can imagine with a 4 year old and a 7 year old, both energetic boys, this lack of funding was a problem...

As I was planning my (free) holiday activities I remembered National Play Day www.playday.org.uk , this is an initiative I found by accident about 4 years ago when I had to leave my newborn baby on his own in the middle of Victoria Square in Bolton whilst I rescued my over adventurous 3 year old from the top of a very high bouncy castle slide!!! The idea of Play Day is that around the country towns arrange things to basically encourage play. This is a fabulous idea, not enough people play any more, particularly adults! So I had a nosy in the free book you get from school (the school holiday bible in my opinion) and it said Victoria Square in the centre of Bolton was doing something for Play Day - so off we trotted at 10am this morning, yes I was the slightly hysterical mother that everyone looks at because she's screaming at her bored, fighting children....

Well my children were well entertained for about 2/3 hours which saved my sanity and their ears from being screamed at further!

I shall show some of the activities they did now!

The beach! only little but both the boys had loads of fun! The water just made it more exciting!

 

Connecting things! I'm at a loss as to what these are called but for me they were great fun, the staff were very helpful and Benjamin was assisted in making a wonderful double decker bus that he was incredibly pleased with....














Sunglasses and a sun visor! This was the craft stall, we managed to arrive early but I expect this would have been very popular as the afternoon went on, again thank you to very helpful staff - one of which went on the hunt for elastic for Elliott's falling off sunglasses! My only criticism is these would have been much better printed on card for ease of putting them on.

 

There was loads of other activities, even for bigger children ie.teenagers. There was a cardboard city which looked very popular even at 10am, a climbing wall, football in copious amounts, extra large Chess and Connect 4,  Bolton market was there but my children didn't allow me near the nice smells... All the boxes were there, much to my 7 year olds excitement - he is obsessed with where Box 1, 2, 3 and 4 are going (these provide free entertainment at various sites all over Bolton in the holidays, we saw Box 2 in Moss Bank Park yesterday which gave free Henna tattoos....

Over all we had a good few hours here and even better it was all free!!!! Now to look to Bolton Food and Drink Festival which is the actual highlight of my year http://www.boltonfoodanddrinkfestival.com/

I must apologise for all the children pictures, I normally keep them child free in my blog - but it was after all a Play Day so I think I can be let off.

Thanks for reading if you got this far, and please feel free to share...

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