15th May Building Connections

 

Today was the first time hosting our new 'Building Connections' family event, a chance for families to come and engage with a whole array of different building kits, materials and games that were not Lego. Not that I have anything against Lego but give me a good old Stickle Brick any day of the week.

The collection had been drawn together over the past few months by rooting and rummaging in charity shops, via canny purchases off Facebook Marketplace purchaces and of course good old eBay and ended up as vertiable Aladdin's cave of things with which people could use their imagination, be inspired and then invent whatever came to mind.

Given that we launched on the hottest day of the year, and also on the day when Nottingham Forest were playing in the 1st round of the football play offs, I wasn't sure whether we would get a famine or a feast of families turning up. In the end it was neither really, with a healthy 7 families turning up, all of whom stayed for the entire 90 mins of the session. 

And it was a learing experience to see what proved popular with the families, with the stuff that I really like and spent ages trying to find eg Zoobs, hardly being used, whereas last minute additions such as Connecting Straws proving very popular. One thing was obvious and that was that the adults who were present appeared to enjoy playing with the kits as much / more than their children!!

Hopefully the next time we hold it we won't be in direct competition with Liverpool and Chelsea in the FA Cup final either.

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