Thomas Land has Expanded!

Last Wednesday we were invited to Thomas Land to attended the opening of it's £2.5 million expansion, which has seen it increase in size by 40%. Thomas Land is situated within Drayton Manor Theme Park nr Tamworth, Staffordshire which is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year!  Being Kent-dwellers, this is not as local to us I we would like and organising the 3 hours plus car journey around rush hour took some planning.

This was to be our 3rd visit to Thomas Land.  C is still as mad about trains as she was for our first visit a year ago, and now B (no doubt spurred on by his sister) is really starting to take an interest too.  He loves playing with the Thomas Wooden Railway at home and is starting to pay more attention to the TV series. 

Thomas & Friends: A Tale of the Not So Brave

We were very lucky to be invited to the VIP screening of the new Thomas & Friend movie: Tale of the Brave at Thomas Land in Drayton Manor Theme Park yesterday.

C is a HUGE Thomas fan and we own the majority of the previous Thomas movies on DVD which she will watch again and again.  I therefore knew this was something we did not want to miss!

Numbers with Thomas

I have been trying to organise an activity every day to do with C during Baby B's naptime.  Today however I've been disorganised and had nothing planned.  I therefore got our bean bags out of the cupboard and hoped an activity would develop as we went.

First of all we got out the sensory bean bags and discussed which were shiny, which were soft, which were rough and which was spotty and stripy.  I wasn't 100% C knew concepts like soft and shiny but she correctly identified all of them and we sorted them into piles.

Utilising a 3 Hour Nap

This afternoon baby B had a rare 3 hour nap.
This allowed me to have a good stretch of quality time with C and I was determined to make the most of it.
First we got out the playdough.  I had been intending just playing with the shape cutters however C immediately ran to get her plastic animals... the result of a previous activity making footprints in the dough.
The animals walked along train tracks, up hills and over bridges.
C is really in to imaginative play at the moment and was in her element.

Hornby Visitor Centre - A Review

Being born and bred in Kent, I am ashamed to say I did not know about the Hornby Visitor Centre until I saw it mentioned last week on a local forum discussing raining day activities for toddlers in Kent. Today was definitely a rainy day and we needed an activity which involved a long enough drive for C to have a nap in the car before we got there.  Hubby remembered me mentioning the Hornby Centre to him when I found out about it, so we thought we would give it a try.

The Hornby Visitor Centre opened in 2010 and is situated in the Westwood Industrial Estate in Margate, very close to the Westwood Cross Shopping Village.  It is easily visible from the main road and we were able to find it without issue.