Following last year’s success at BoomTown Fair, we returned, alongside the SAW Trust, with an Alice In Wonderland themed delight for the senses, with science, art and writing activities to excite young minds.

Table laid and ready for the first guests to arrive!

Now in its tenth year, BoomTown Fair attracts up to 60, 000 people and many of those came to visit us at Kidztown, with its impressive visual displays and interactive activities for families.

Our stand entitled “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” revolved around workshops which had four stations for the children to rotate around. The tea parties began with the mad hatter revealing secret invisible ink messages to the children before the experiments could begin!

The children were tasked with many exciting science-based activities. Tasty treats the children could create included sweet, fizzy sherbet and rapid ice-cream made using an endothermic reaction and flavoured with plant flavourings (vanilla, coconut and strawberry). In addition to these, there were also many pigment-based activities inspired by all the bright colours in Wonderland, for the children to try. Including; natural plant pigment tissue tie-dyes and colour changing flowers and celery. The results of which decorated the tent throughout the weekend.

Carrying on with our use of plant products, the children also got to create their own fruit flavoured jelly balls, using alginate gelling agent, derived from algae, to go with a fizzy drink!

The final activity for the children was to write secret messages, which would be revealed by a new set of children, at the next tea party by the Mad Hatter.

Some of our tea-party guests about to make sweet treats.

As well as the tea parties, there were also numerous activities and challenges for the children to engage with while the table was re-set. These activities included using microscopes to explore the microscopic world Alice enters when she shrinks, writing nonsense poems, like those the Mad Hatter recites at his tea party and pinning the grin on the Cheshire cat.

We had a range of craft activities available, providing the children with something to take home with them from their time at BoomTown. The children could make Wonderland inspired flower faces, clock necklaces, a Mad Hatter’s Hat and playing card bowties.

Across the three days the children were able to immerse themselves in a Wonderland of science, art and writing, feeding their curiosity with a range of thrilling experiments and allowing their creativity to run wild with exciting craft projects.

A big thank you to the entire team who helped with the preparations and running of “The Mad Hatters Tea Party” and to BoomTown for having us once again!

By Shannon Woodhouse