Madhouse Diaries : Health Forum Kids' Festival

Yesterday, after a Saturday morning meeting at school (*groans*), we headed off to the annual kids' festival that, this year, had combined forces with the Health Forum to focus on the human body, healthy eating and physical activity. The first activity was this "Soufflomètre" or "Puffometer". The kids had to blow as hard as they could to see how high they could make the ping pong ball go, before completing an obstacle course then blowing again to see if they had less puff afterwards.

Juliette had great fun on this obstacle course but absolutely hated the one that you can see in the background. It was an "accrobranche" Go Ape treetop adventure-style track that she begged to have a go on, but she froze half way round, burst into tears and needed rescuing by one of the guides ! She soon got her smile back though !

Pierre kept his feet firmly on the ground but had fun jumping on, over and through everything he could find !

This looks like a cross between sledging, skateboarding, weightliting and football - it was good fun though, judging by their faces !

I might have to try this with some books and a ball of string at home !

You were supposed to make this move without using your feet, just by wiggling your bum !

Time to refuel with some fruit salad - apparently they were the first kids to be able to recognise and name persimmons !

On to the next activity, run by the local zoo. Pierre picked a parrot and Juliette a flamingo and they had to fill shopping baskets with things that their chosen animal (or bird) eats.

Then they got to play at being a vet !

Next, Pierre and Juliette wanted to try out "judo" - the twist was, we had to join in too and it wasn't actually judo, it was rough and tumble play on the soft mats !

First we had races on all fours.

Then the kids had races rolling us all the way across the mats !

They we had "pull the tail off" races - I might have cheated slightly by laying on my back so nobody could get it ! It didn't work though because they all ganged up on me and used the rolling technique from the earlier game !

Pierre still had bags of energy to spare so he headed off for the soft play obstacle course.

I was sure he was going to get stuck in the tunnel but he just about made it ! No jokes about giant ribbed condoms please !

Next they made skeleton puppets. Juliette impressed everyone by being able to name all the bones on the skeleton (it just happened to be what she had had a test on a couple of weeks ago !)

We took part in a quiz and Pierre did a puzzle - for our efforts we won a DVD of Shrek 4, which the kids were very pleased about !

Juliette swotted up a bit more about the human body.

You may be wondering where Sophie was during all this - she'd opted to do a Decopatch workshop and was busy making a sunglasses photo frame while we did all the "little kids' stuff" !

But we all headed off together to the mock-up of an operating theatre where Juliette put on the scrubs !

Her jobs were the drip and the X-ray machine ! It was really well done and looked very authentic. I suspect there will be much playing of doctors and nurses in the coming weeks at The Madhouse !

Time for a snack before heading home - strawberry milk with a strawberry sponge cake and then they all headed off to grab some more fruit salads !

Definitely not bad at all for a free day out - even the snacks were free !

   

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Madhouse diaries : Sweet Beets !

Madhouse diaries : Donkey poo for tea !

Madhouse diaries : Up close to the zoo animals !