Now that I’ve managed the trip into London a couple of times with just smallest, I’ve been looking for an excuse to take the older kids too, something that would enthuse them so that they’d think it would be worth the journey. I’ve looked at the various RI lectures, home ed meetups and so on, and I couldn’t honestly see those capturing their imagination enough to get us through the stresses of the journey.
But a visit to a Build-a-bear shop, for a party…
And what’s more, we travelled by train! The excitement knew very few bounds 🙂
And after two trains, we had two tubes to catch. Funnily enough, I didn’t have enough hands to be taking pictures during that part of the journey. Have to say that the wrap really is a lifesaver for travelling on the underground – leaves me hands free to deal with Small on escalators, although he did manage very well considering he’s not really encountered them all that often, certainly not recently.
Then we had the obligatory getting lost bit, sigh. I really am quite amazingly hopeless at navigation. And that with a streetmap *and* directions. But we made it in the end to the Build a Bear shop in Covent Garden, along with a lot of other bloggers and their children, including Sian from Mummytips who had a video camera with her.
I had a phone 🙂 (I did have a camera as well, but not enough hands to get it out of my bag.) So I took some pics of the bears in progress.
Just in case anyone wasn’t sure how Small feels about build a bear:
There were a lot of kids in our group. Big was slightly stressed that they did it by height starting with the shortest, but it was a reasonable way to go. If they’d done it by age she’d have been waiting about the same length of time I think. It does take a while to stuff that many bears – given that build a bear do parties as a regular attraction it surprises me that there isn’t a slightly more comfortable waiting area for encumbered parents. (The children don’t need seats, they are too busy bouncing 😉 ) But I’m used to standing around with a baby strapped to me, so it wasn’t too problematic.
As we were partying, Bearemy came out. Eventually, after the children were encouraged to scream for him. Tbh, this is something I find slightly bizarre. We spend so much of our time encouraging our children to be quiet and calm (well, I do, don’t you?) and then we take them somewhere exciting and wind them up til they scream. Odd. But anyway, Bearemy came out and we did the heart ceremony, which went down pretty well all round. Small had already inserted a heart into his PudC (his choice of name 😉 ) as that is what you do after you stuff a bear, and things do have to be done right, so he rubbed the bear on his head, and cheek, and heart and so on. He was very happy with it.
And with the cuddles. He really really loved the cuddles.
And after the heart ceremony, we retired to a slightly more private party, with food
and party games
.
This gave me chance to catch up with some blog buddies, and have several large cups of tea 🙂
The kids were given goody bags which included gift cards for build a bear, so once the party was over, we went back to the shop 🙂 They got together to choose smallest her first bear and clothes, and each put a heart in. The world’s first timelord teddy bear 😀 And then we walked through London to Holborn tube station to avoid the ridiculous lifts at Covent Garden, and from there to Liverpool Street again.
And eventually on a train for home.
and lots of children.
It was a fabulous day out.
The kids love build a bear. They play on buildabearville – if you use your receipt from the shop you can put your bear online with you. (We got friend codes a while back for their original bears.) And while the bears aren’t cheap, there are plenty of other bears out there at least as expensive. These ones last well, and the process of making a bear does seem to make them special to the children. We first built bears (OK, one bear and one frog) several years ago with Christmas money from Grandfather and they are still highly favoured toys. The accessories are pretty expensive, but we don’t go for all that many of those, although we do get birthday reminder emails that sometimes tempt us to the shops.
The bears the children were given on this visit are Children in Need bears. They retail at £15, of which £5 goes to Children in Need, which is a pretty healthy cut all things told. You can donate at the till as well, and another goody in the bag was The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart
. I haven’t got around to reading it yet, but I do intend to as it seems like someone who can do this sort of thing with teddy bears might have a few useful tips for getting ahead in business.
All in all, I’m quite favourably inclined to Build a Bear. You aren’t just paying for the toy, it seems to me, you are paying for the experience. That kind of memory lasts well, and in my mind is worth a little extra money. Far better to spend money that way on children than on plastic tat that clutters the place up and gets broken, then doesn’t even biodegrade once it’s chucked out. And yes, I’m aware that that probably seems a rather controversial view from me, but I’m doing a lot of thinking about this sort of stuff atm, and that’s my current position.
Disclosure: we were given the bears and accessories. I funded the trip myself.
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