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We were recently invited to spend a morning at Steps Ahead, located within The Hive at Garon's Park. When we arrived, we had a lovely welcome from the staff who explained the activities on offer and showed us the amenities.
The Hive itself is an outdoor nature base, providing outdoor, educational, creative and wellbeing experiences for all ages and abilities. Steps Ahead run regular pre-school sessions and home education sessions, as well as events during the holidays.
The event we attended was an Easter event so we were given a clipboard with pictures of eggs that we had to find throughout the morning. As well as this, there were lots of sensory activities around the hive to take part in and we were free to wander around at our own pace. On this particular day, there was also a storyteller in the gardens. The activities were set up beautifully and all the children got fully stuck in to everything.
Some of the activities included sand, mud trays, sensory trays with rice, flour, flower pressing, decorating stones and making bird-feeders, which was a personal favourite for the boys! There were stations for arts and crafts with members of staff on hand to help and physical activities too including ball throwing, balancing on wooden beams and lots more!
There are toilets and hand-washing facilities available and an area to leave pushchairs if you want to. All of the staff are so friendly and helpful and really went out of their way to make it a lovely experience for the children.
The highlight for the boys was just having the opportunity to really get messy, explore and be creative at their own pace. I think often activities and days out can be very stimulating and overwhelming so this was a really lovely, calm experience.
I highly recommend giving it a try – it's a really great activity if you want to do something different! You can find Steps Ahead details here
