What happened at Play Project this half term?

Every child should feel happy as they learn and grow. It’s one of the reasons behind our Play Project in Cardiff. All year the team create safe and supportive play spaces for young children and their sanctuary seeking families. This half term was extra-special for our families with some exciting first experiences and new friendships formed.

Here are some of our families’ favourite moments from last week’s activities:

1. Meeting the animals at Margam Park

We waved goodbye to the city and jumped on the coach to visit Margam Park. We even got lucky with the weather as the sun shone for us all day! None of our families had been to the country park before and had so much fun exploring the nature trails and house.

The real highlight was meeting the animals and the little goats were a winner with our families. Another park visitor was extremely generous and shared their animal food with the children so they could give the goats a tasty snack. Thank you whoever you were, your kindness in including the children meant a lot to us.

“Can we come back again?” one of our three-year-olds asked as we boarded the coach.

Their was face still beaming from a day of excitedly running round and playing in the autumn leaves.

Just as we were arriving back in Cardiff (thanks to the wonderful Trinity Centre team for helping us with the coach!) a parent came up to say thank you. Their children had played happily all day and this parent wanted to share that she had made a new friend too. She had recently arrived in Cardiff and only been to a few sessions with us before, but today she’d found another single mum who is also a sanctuary seeker. They shared their picnic while watching their children play together. What a memorable day for both families to form so many new friendships. It also reminds us that Play Project is as much a space for parents to connect with each other, as it is for their kids.

2. Spooky Halloween party

Time to dim the lights and decorate for our Halloween party! Meryl and Naomi made the space feel exciting and eerie for our guests and carved some creepy pumpkins.

“Wow this looks amazing and the children are so excited!”

Once guests arrived, it was time to get the party started.

We are lucky to have such helpful volunteers at Play Project, whose talents also include face painting! Our artistic volunteers were offering scary face paints for anyone and everyone who wanted one. Which, turns out was most of the group as our volunteers were busy all morning helping our children get into character as new Halloween creatures. We also received donated Halloween costumes for the children to wear home and carry on feeling spooky all week.

Children had the option to play spooky games and craft their own Halloween artwork. We also had a movie space for kids to watch a film and relax.

Every child left with a special piece of Halloween fruit: all treats and zero tricks at Play Project.

3. A special concert with a twist

Earlier in the year, a group of musicians from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales joined a Play Project session so the children could hear them perform. This week, they’d invited us to come to a special concert in Cardiff Bay.

Our families arrived excited and some of the children were dressed in their new Halloween costumes from the party: they looked terrific!

As soon as we walked into the concert space, our children were thrilled to see Lenny on the bass clarinet. He’s already a hit at Play Project. What was even better, was that today Lenny was dressed as a wizard for the Halloween concert!

Just as the band started to play, they were joined by the unwelcome screech of a fire alarm.

Once we could return to the building (luckily a false alarm) the alarm was showing no signs of stopping in the concert space. But, Lenny and his band of four musicians jumped to rescue! They took their instruments and led our families to a new space for an impromptu performance. Our children clapped, danced, and sang along. They left after a memorable afternoon and were made to feel so special by the musicians.

We couldn’t have asked for a better half term!

To learn more about the Play Project, speak to one of the team about our services for children and families.