We are big fans of a day out at the local garden centre, so when Squire's Garden Centre invited us to to try out their Create and Grow activities over the Easter break from school of course we jumped at the chance. There are 15 Squire's locations around London and Surrey, so do take a look to see if there is one near you.
This Easter the activities are available to take part in from April 8th - 18th, weekdays from 10am to 3pm. There is a Spring Hunt to find the clues around the garden centre and then reveal a mystery word to receive a sticker and a sweet treat, this costs £2 per child. The other activity is to plant a pot of succulents and decorate it with Easter stickers, the cost for this is just £6 per child.
We started with the Spring Hunt, this is something that we've done before at Squire's, so the children were familiar with how it works and got stuck straight in. We picked up our sheets from the information desk and set off around the shop looking for clues. There were 7 clues in total to find, so we walked around looking for them. Each clue is numbered and has a picture as well as a written clue to help you fill in the blanks.
For us it's really fun doing these activities year after year, as now Ethan can do this completely independently and with beautiful writing and even Ivy is able to write on her own sheet (I used to have to do it for her) with just a little bit of help with spelling. I can just picture it next year, I'll be able to sit down with a coffee as they do it on their own (just joking, don't leave your kids unattended in the garden centre, ha ha!)
Once we had found all the clues and filled in all of the blanks there was then a word spelled out downwards in the yellow boxes, which the children had to write out and reveal at the information desk to then receive their prize (a delicious piece of chocolate pizza which they absolutely had to share with Mummy!)
Next we went over to the craft area to make our Easter planters. You can choose either a metal pot or a watering can in a variety of colours and then decorate it with as many cute Easter stickers as you would like (for Ivy this was a lot of stickers!)
Each of the children then chose which three plants they would like in their Easter planters, there was a huge variety of lovely little plants to choose from. They really enjoyed this part and were so excited that they got to have three and not just one.
Once chosen we went back to the table to get started with the planting!
The very kind man who was running the activity offered to scoop up the soil for us, but as we're not afraid of getting a bit dirty those little hands went straight into the soil and scooped it into the plant pots. I do recommend bringing some hand wipes with you as this did get a bit messy, but it's all a part of the experience and the kids do love getting stuck right in.
We were then shown how to get our little plants out of their individual pots and plant them in the soil of our planters. The children did this really well and I was very impressed that they managed to keep them in tact as they moved them from one pot to another.
And their finished Easter planters look so lovely! They had a great time putting them all together and the best part is that they are very low maintenance for a family who aren't necessarily green fingered. We were told that all we need to do is water them every few weeks, which is perfect for us!
We highly recommend visiting your local Squire's this Easter to take part in their Create and Grow activities. Even though we have done this as a review, it is definitely something that we would choose to do again as it's so easy and fun for the children and they love being able to bring home something that they have made.
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* This is a review post, we were invited to Squire's Garden Centre to take part in their Create and Grow activities over Easter in order to review them, all opinions are our own.*
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