Beating the January Blues With a Day At Life

Feeling the post Christmas drudgery and blues? Fear not we have an idea for an awesome January blues buster day out, with a trip to Life for Skating and a visit to Dino Jaws (Skating runs until 18th February and Dino Jaws Until 24th April)

We have written about Life Science Centre on more than one occasion but it really is an awesome place to take the kids and with Annual passes available you can get great value for money with year round trips.

We were invited to have a turn on the ice rink and take a look around the centre and my littles really love visiting so we headed along with my godson and my children's god mother (confused yet?)

The rink is situated in Times Square and you enter via Life reception, Ticket purchase was super simple and we were choosing our skates really quickly. I say 'we' I actually mean the Godmother and kids, this mammy is not good with ice!

My awesome strong girl, full of determination to go it alone!

Gently does it...

we know where we are best off!

I Have skates but.....

Straight back up again, yes his baby sister is having a chiuckle

There was plenty of falling, a bit of frustration but overall the kids (and the godmother did  really well, we had lots of time on the ice, then decided it was time to warm up inside.

After a visit to see little bear, we went to see the Dino Jaws exhibition which was by far my Godson's favourite part of the day, he is Dino mad and I really think he wanted to take the Dino's home ....

'here chicken chicken I just want to play'

While the little littles played upstairs in the awesome play zone I took my biggies on the motion ride for Polar Express. Oh I loved it so much, the kids ended up going on twice and were really very enthralled by it all, I shan't ruin the surprise but Life have added an extra dimension to make it a bit more magic!

Ready for the motion ride

3d glasses ready!

'Ok I have 4 be;;s and you have 2 frogs...lets make some tunes!'

After some more play it was time for Lunch and man alive can my kids eat! 6 of us had 2 adult meals of Sausage casserole and chips, 2 kids pick n mix meals, one hot dog and chips and a burger and chips. Cold drinks all round plus a tea, a ginger bread latte, a slice of rainbow cake and a muffin all for under £30 The food was lovely and whilst we were a bit disappointed that poor termite couldn't have anything really from the main menu as she is allergic to dairy and soya the staff couldn't have been more helpful in finding some snack items she could have and giving her extra fruit and ham.

Dino Cheese !

Our allergy friendly plate

So if you are looking to blow off the cobwebs and fill your weekends with winter wonder my top tip would be to head to Life.

If you've bee already let me know what you think?

Mini Scientist Mission 5 - Skating @ Life Review and a Giveaway

I'm not terrible at Ice Skating but Im also not brilliant at it and the thoought of taking my lot on the ice was a scary prospect but Peanut and The Golden Child have asked almost continuously for 2 weeks to head along and go Skating at Life so I bit the bullet and we popped along last weekend.

 

We arrived and were allocated a time slot (straight away) and given the right coloured wristband. I'm going to be honest and say when we walked past the rink there were lots of groups of teenagers (dun dun dun) and I was concerned we would be jostled and knocked and I'd have to put my old mother scowl on! But my fears were fruitless as it turns out as there are Marshall's on the ice and it seems to keep everyone moving safely and behaving nicely.

 

We popped through to swap our shoes for skates then got ready for skating. My one grumble of the day would be that we weren't told we needed to hand in each of the bands to get back our shoes, more on that later but it's a good point to keep in mind for your visit.

 

 

There a nice seating area between the rink and the shoe exchange so Termite and daddy stayed there (she had to try some skates on though) and watched us skating round the ice.

 

I decided, as the double blade kid skates were too small for my big footed children, that it was safer to divide and conquer as the littlies aren't so good at skating, so they took turns to skate with mummy. Turns out that skating is a rather tiring affair and after about half an hour of spinning round the rink my big two were ready to have a rest and go play inside. Here's where we had a bit of a delay, being a super efficient mummy (pahahaha). I stripped us all of skates then carried them all (with just socks on my feet) to the exchange where I was asked for all the bands, explaining I didn't know we had to hand them in I thought I might be able to get our shoes and bring the bands back as we passed but that wasn't to be so I trudged back for the bands then back for the shoes and back to the kids again which resulted in cold wet feet! I shall know for next time though and really 'first world problems' it was an extra 2 minutes!

After skating we headed upstairs where the kids enjoyed a 'nature discovery' some 'cookery' and some 'fish chasing'! I love how they can just play freely with all the great role play stuff here

Overall we loved our day at Life the kids were suitably exhausted from the skating, they loved playing inside too and we all had lots of fun. As a parent of three I would have loved to be able to take them all on the ice together, logistically a nightmare though. So it would have been nice to have some bigger double bade skates, some skate Guides (like those wee push along penguins), or to have been able to wear the ice shoes, I did try my hardest to wheedle the lady in the skate hut to let me have some but she wasn't to be swayed! We will definitely go back again though and as we didn't fall over I'm giving the day a firm thumbs up!

 

If you'd like to try skating I have two family passes to give away to be in with a chance of winning one, pop over to our facebook page and leave a message on the wall saying you'd like to win, or click here to pop over to our twitter page to retweet this message

 

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