A few weeks ago Buttons was asked by a lovely mum who lives in Guildford to help her with her daughters birthday party at Hatchlands Park. If you haven’t heard of this venue before it’s a National Trust site situated in Guildford as even though the mansion is a family home you can look around both it and the gardens and park land.
There were to be around 25 children aged around 5 and the plan was some type of nature trail though the park before a picnic lunch at the barn. I have been on lots of school trips to places like Kew Gardens, Marwell Zoo, the Science museum and Tate modern so was really looking forward to planning the activities and had lots if ideas.
I arranged a site visit to the park to plan the route and met both the party mum Veronica and the events organiser there to have a chat with them about what we could and could not do, and where we could and could not go. It’s a lovely venue and perfect for this type of party. Lots of wide open space for spotting wildlife such as deer, cows, and birds (the children even spotted a dog!) but also some great areas for exploring such as the Wizards Wix’s Willow Warren (try saying that more then once) and the blue bells woods. We made it just in time for the children to see the bluebells.
It was myself and Stevie and the party started with bubbles and giant games on the lawn before a quick loo break. We then handed out all the children’s personalised nature trail hand books in the court yard and off we went. We had lots of fun activities to keep the children busy on the hour trail. These included Colour bingo, Wildlife spotting, Tree ring dating and of course fairy spotting. The children loved making notes in there books and talking about what they could see. The park hides fairies in the spring time in the woods so spotting them all was a highlight for everyone. We got up to 11 by picnic time.
The books also had a page for tree rubbings, a bluebell colouring in page and a map of the park so we could all keep track of where we were.
It was a fanatic party to work on and we were pretty lucky with the weather, only a little shower later on but the children really don’t care about a bit of rain.
This is the email we received from Veronica that very afternoon.
“Hi Ellie, Thank you so much again for helping to make Gloria’s birthday party so special. She loved it as did her friends. They loved looking for fairies in the woods, pixie dust, their little explorer booklets, chasing bubbles and being outdoors! Have had many compliments about you and Stevie from the other mums”
Exciting News!
The party was such a hit in fact we have been talking to Hatchlands Park about offering it as a Buttons party package and I am delighted to say it will be available as of July!
If you are interested in a summer nature trail party at Hatchlands Park pop over to the contact page and drop me a line 🙂
Wow – fab Ellie well done you! xx