Jemma and family, from Essex, went all out with this family funfair day. Lots of games and laughs, and by the looks of it great weather too! Let’s take a look…
What did you do?
We decided to create a fair in the garden for our girls. To be honest I’m not very arty so the idea of making everything filled me with dread. Good old Amazon and Argos to the rescue!
We already had “traditional” games like tin can toss and beanbag throw but knew we wanted to add to them.
A bit of searching led to lots of options for garden games but that wasn’t quite what we had in mind so some creativity was needed.
We found the whoopsee whoopsee (what we referred to as “don’t step in it”), monster munch , hook a poop and the inflatable dart board on Amazon.
Bunting and 120 pieces of plastic party bag fillers.
Total cost was just over £70.00 so not terrible.
A trip to the local pound shop for balloons, coloured card, devils dust (otherwise known as glitter 😱) tennis balls and a cheep paddling pool completed the activities.
We decided to make a pin the tail on the donkey – thank you Pinterest for the printable donkey, and guessing jars.
We used empty jars from the kitchen so no additional purchase needed. We filled them with sweeties and had two where you had to guess the amount and one where you guessed the weight.
We had the idea to fill a paddling pool with balloons, bury tennis balls in there and give the kids a limited time to find them. Unfortunately, the wind meant that balloons were blowing all over the garden. So at 7.30am on the morning of our Funday we needed an alternative. Hence the duvet cover filled with balloons, plastic balls and 9 tennis balls. The idea: blind folded wiggle into the cover and find the tennis balls. Using your sense of touch and nothing else. This was great fun and the girls loved it!
Of all our activities the only one I would change was the don’t step in it. Not because it wasn’t fun but because all the “poop” dried out, crumbled and started to look like real poo!
We also made a lucky dip, had a glitter tattoo station and also pint the rocks. We already had the glitter tattoo set and the painting rocks.
We made the decision to award tickets (we just used raffle tickets) that the girls could swap for prizes during the day. This kept the kids interested an meant they were happy to play the games more than once. We also charged tickets for glitter tattoos, rock paining and entering the guessing games. This also encouraged the girls to play more as they had to spend some of their tickets early on.
In order to make the guessing games more fun, instead of asking them to get to the nearest number as created a grid with 16 different numbers. They could pick as many numbers as they liked as long as they paid their 1 ticket per turn.
We made a photo frame for our photo corner and added some props.
Over all it was a great day and well worth the money. My youngest is already asking when we can do it again.
What is next?
Our next project is our version of it’s a knock out. We have lots of giant garden games like Kerplunk plunk, giant connect 4, and half size air hockey table and giant playing cards. They have no clue so we’ll arrange this for a couple of weeks time.
Tell us a little bit about yourself…
I’m Jemma and I live in Hainault, Essex, England with my husband Wesley, and our two daughters Bella and Hannah.
I’m a legal secretary currently working from home and looking like I’m staying working from home until early September. Wesley manages an Adult health and social services team so he’s been really busy over the last 11 weeks so this was a real treat.
We worked hard earlier in the week making the lucky dip box, pin the tail, and photo frame. On the morning of the event we started in garden at just before 7am. The kids were downstairs and raring to go 9.30.
So far, lockdown has been ok. Bella has ASD, ADHD, Sensory processing disorder and epilepsy. Not going to school had decreased her anxieties so much that it’s like being around a different child. Hannah is struggling a little, and had really missed her friends but FaceTime and Zoom is helping there.
I’m trying (albeit not to great fruition) to home school our girls. I’m finding that trying to incorporate learning into fun is the best way hence weighing one of the jars.
We follow housebound with kids on Facebook and love the content it offers.
