The Gruffalo Trail at Sherwood Pines

After a lot of rain and rubbish weather, Wednesday saw a break with some nice sunshine, so I packed up a picnic and some games and headed to Sherwood Pines to walk round the Gruffalo Trail and a few hours in the fresh air.

First we went to meet the Gruffalo, the attention to detail was great with the purple prickles on his back and the wart on the end of his nose. The kids loved him and gave him a big hug!

It was easy to spot the trail from the path with lots of brightly coloured bunting leading the way.

First we stopped and saw the mouse, we've read this story so many times it wasn't difficult to tell it to them as we walked through the forest.

Along the way there were lots of signs which gave you tasks to do, such as listen out for sounds you can here and spot colours in the forest.

Next was a sign asking us to make a character from the book out of things from the forest floor,  we chose to make the snake out of pine cones and a rock, it looks really good with the pine cone seeds looking like scales.

Next we had to move like the different creatures in the book, can you slither like a snake or stomp like a Gruffalo. 

Next we took a detour to look round some houses and play a game of hide and seek, spotting what bugs we could see under old bits of bark and then onto building a den. This is a really great way of getting the children to work together and I loved den building when I was younger.

Time for a climb...

After a few hours on the park, a hot chocolate and ice cream stop we headed back to the car but before we came home we had time to look in the woods again. My daughter adding to the collection of pine cones we have and my son making himself a stick man complete with sword and shield. 

This park is a great place to visit if you like biking, playing or just exploring.

Linking up to Country Kids on Coombe Mill

The joy of reading to children...

Whilst sat reading my son his current favourite book in bed last night, I remembered how much I loved my mum and dad reading to me and how I enjoy reading books to him.

In part I think it is due to the books themselves, we are currently reading Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. They are doing this for the Christmas play at nursery and so I felt we should buy it so we could read it lots.

It is a brilliant book, as are all the ones written by these two most talented children's writers and I thoroughly enjoy reading it.

Obviously the most well known is The Gruffalo but we also have A Squash and a Squeeze and it is really great to hear him reciting the words back.

The next on our list is  Room on a Broom, as with most books these days the others in the 'series' can be found at the back and so we have to go through the ritual of which books we have and which ones we will be getting next every night.

A few of our other favourites although not really readers but hilariously funny is anything by Nick Sharratt, we were bought Octopus Socktopus by a friend for our sons 1st Birthday and it still makes us laugh.

And finally, our other favourite books, the Mr Men series! My mum and dad have some videos (yes videos) and he watches them over and over again.

We love the books and even though they are a 'bit long' as my husband claims every time this is the choice of book to read, they always have a great meaning and I do enjoy reading them and doing the voices.

My favourites are Mr Messy and Mr Greedy, not just because we have two of them in our house but because the endings are great :)