When Sadie Wetherell decided to plan a day of adventure for her two children – Zach, nine, and seven-year-old Olivia – she opted to spring it as a surprise on her kids. And rather than heading far afield to an expensive and busy tourist attraction, she chose to stick close to the family’s home – near the seaside in Dorset.
“In the week we’re always busy with homework and chores,” Sadie says, “so I was really looking forward to spending some time with the kids, doing something as a family.
“Normally at the weekend, Zach is happy with his Xbox and Olivia enjoys creative things like colouring, but first thing, I told them that we were going to have a day of adventure,” says Sadie, who works as a technical trainer for a boat building company.
Treasure hunt
The first thing that the family did was head to nearby Hamworthy Beach, armed with a collection of plastic pots, some dog treats, and one very important guest – the family dog Vinnie, a Mallorquin Ratero dog. The plan was to let Vinnie have some fun by sending him on a dog treasure hunt.
“All we did was take some pots – the ones that supermarket dips come in – and filled them with dog treats. We then pushed them into the sand, spaced out in a pattern, and unleashed Vinnie.
“He was in seventh heaven; burrowing around in the sand and unearthing the treats, much to the delight of Zach and Olivia, who had great fun chasing after him.”
Back at the house, the next task for the family was to manufacture some homemade bird feeders. “I had never done this before, so I Googled it to find out,” says Sadie.
“It was really simple – we just bought some birdseed and some gelatine, boiled some water and then mixed it all together. The children used cookie cutters to cut out some shapes and packed them down. We then popped them in the freezer.”
While the bird feeders were setting in the freezer, Sadie told the kids that they were going on a camping adventure. But they weren’t about to head for the hills – it would be in their own back garden.
Secret garden party
“Zach was really excited right away as he is going camping with the school soon and has joined the Sea Scouts, so he loved the idea.”
Sadie, Zach and Olivia put the tent up in the garden, but then it was time to get creative and turn the tent into an exotic fairyland.
“We went mad decorating it. We used all sorts of things like cushions, fairy lights and pillows. It looked really lovely and the fairy lights, which run on batteries, were really easy to pop on. It looked so pretty.”
The kids were also given their own head torches, so they could keep their hands free for more important adventures.
“I left them to it for a bit. When I came back it was starting to get a bit dark and they were snuggled up together under a blanket, reading each other stories using the battery-powered head torches.
“I could hear them giggling away to each other and I must admit my heart melted a little bit,” says Sadie.
“They were totally in their own little world out there. They didn’t want to come back in – I think they’d have slept out there if I’d let them.”
Overall, the family’s day of adventure was judged a huge success. “Zach’s favourite thing was the tent, and Olivia loved the bird feeders. Once we had hung them up, frozen, there were all kinds of birds flocking into the garden. Olivia was thrilled.”
And Sadie loved the whole day too: “We do try and go out and do things, we’ve tried geocaching for example, but it was lovely to do something a bit different on our doorstep.
“And it was all so cheap – it didn’t cost us anything to go to the beach with some plastic pots, and the bird feeders also cost next to nothing.
“And even if we hadn’t had the tent, we could have just put out some sheets and cushions and pretended. It was lovely for them to have a little mission at the weekend – something to do rather than just winging it, like we usually do.
“I think that with kids it’s very easy to let them get on with stuff, but when you play actively as a family and give them something to do it is important to them to finish the job – that’s nice to see and fun to be a part of.”
If you buy one thing ...
Sadie really recommends the battery-operated Lichfield Headtorch 7 LED Lights head torches she bought. “The children really loved these. At one point, they were pretending to be miners. They had such a lot of fun being really silly with them. But the torches will also be really useful for when we go camping again. I will have to keep an eye on Zach as I can imagine he will try and use his for reading under the covers – he is very into Diary of a Wimpy Kid at the moment.”
