Unleash the whippets and the bairns – Yorkshire Day is almost upon us!

Flat caps at the ready as we prepare to celebrate all that is good about God’s Own County. We are unashamedly proud of where we’re from and enjoy doing things locally and further afield across Yorkshire with the kids to show them what they’ve got to be proud of too.


There’s so much to be celebrated about Skipton’s heritage that we’re spoilt for choice. For a low-key family day out you could look round Skipton Castle… go for a walk in Skipton Woods…take a trip out in the dales…a short barge trip…a visit to Bolton Abbey…or simply treat them to a pork pie!


If you’re willing to travel a little bit further then you could head over to Haworth where there’ll be children’s rides, a bouncy castle and much more all weekend (Sat 30th and Sun 31st July). Visit the events section at www.haworthvillage.co.uk for details. On Yorkshire Day itself, 1 August, East Riddlesden Hall will be hosting Yorkshire themed activities, food and shopping. If you visit Keighley’s Church Green, also on 1 August, Haworth Brass Band will be playing, along with others as well as Yorkshire-themed refreshments from 5pm. Visit the ‘events’ section under ‘about’ at www.keighley.gov.uk

If you’re happy to go further still and have toddlers who’ll sit still in the car long enough to make it worthwhile, you could head up to Hawes to the Wensleydale Creameries or even make a pilgrimage over to York where they’re holding Yorkshire Day celebrations across the city for the whole family. 

If you don’t want to head out at all but are still in the mood to celebrate the White Rose, then stock up on flour, milk and eggs and whip up a storm in the kitchen with the kids in the form of good old Yorkshire Puds!


Ingredients:
Plain flour 75g
Eggs (medium) 2
Milk 75ml
Water 50ml
Cooking Oil


What to do:
*Drizzle a tiny bit of oil in each of the wells of a 12 cup non-stick tray and put in a very hot oven (Mk 8, 425F, 240C).
*Fill a standard-sized mug about half full with plain flour. Put the flour, two eggs and a pinch of salt in a mixing bowl and mix till you have a gloopy paste (get the kids to help with the mixing!)
*Fill about one third of a standard-sized mug with milk and then top up with water so the mug is half full. Add the water-milk to the bowl, a bit at a time while mixing, making sure the mix stays smooth.
*Carefully take the tray out of the oven, the oil should be very hot by this stage, and pour the batter into the wells so that it is evenly divided between the 12 wells (they should each be about two thirds to three quarters full).
*Put the tray back in the oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the batter has risen and is golden coloured, and there are no under-cooked bits.

Like pancake day but without the pressure of the flip, the choices for toppings are endless! Will your kids choose to stick with the staple beef, gravy & onions or opt for fruit jam; maple syrup or treacle; ice cream and fresh berries; hazelnut/chocolate spread; melted Wensleydale cheese & onion or how about a pizza topping for the truly adventurous?


Whatever you choose to do on this auspicious occasion, steer clear of the borders and the job’s a good ‘un. Happy Yorkshire Day all! X


Ps We know we’ve some lovely Lancashire friends on here – if you can’t face any of these suggestions then check out the events or things to do pages for alternatives!

Butterflies flutter by...

www.bigbutterflycount.org

You might already be watching with your little ones as the butterflies go fluttering by this summer but are you counting them? From 16 to 31 July, a nation-wide survey is under way, where people are encouraged to count how many butterflies they see in any one place from parks, school grounds to gardens, fields and forests.


Each spotting session takes just 15 minutes so hopefully just long enough to keep the attention of toddlers! We’ve seen all sorts of butterflies – lots of red admirals in and around Skipton this year! - out on our walks - so taking part in the count might be something fun to add to a stroll out with the children. We’ve seen them flitting past everywhere from more remote bridleways to Gawflat conservation meadow at Aireville Park, Skipton. For butterfly spotting charts as well as all the details about how to take part with your little ones visit www.bigbutterflycount.org


For the guaranteed flutter of butterflies all around you and a longer day out, we’re sure children of all ages would love a trip to Tropical World in Leeds (approx. 27 miles from Skipton). Under fives go £FREE and will no doubt be wowed by the butterflies, tropical birds, iguanas, snakes, spiders and other insects in the ‘rainforest’. In the nocturnal house there are also fruit bats, monkeys, bush babies and sugar gliders to marvel at. As well as meerkats, snakes and crocodiles!

If all this doesn’t make the thought of the car journey worthwhile (and let’s face it sometimes nothing makes the car journey worthwhile!) you could celebrate butterflies in your own back garden or in window boxes by planting flowers with your kids, specifically to attract them. For tips on what to plant and when visit www.yorkshirebutterflies.org.uk/gardening


If the sight of all these colourful butterflies inspires your little ones to get creative you could encourage them to capture what they see with butterfly hand print painting, symmetry pictures or making a butterfly out of a trusty toilet roll tube (no sticky back plastic required!)


Butterfly hand print painting
Start off by drawing and painting the butterfly body and a head as a starting point. Then paint or encourage your toddler to paint their hands (one at a time!) with lots of different colours – maybe a different colour per finger or a mix as the mood takes them, and get them to make two hand prints for wings on either side of the body. Once it’s dried you can then decorate it further with googly eyes and sequins or beads…anything that takes their fancy in fact!


Butterfly out of a toilet roll tube
Wrap a toilet roll tube in colourful paper or alternatively paint it all over. Either draw or stick on a pair of googly eyes to one end of the roll. Use either pipecleaners, bits of ribbon or paper to make the antennae and stick them inside the toilet roll tube so they poke out of the top. Then cut out a pair of wings shape and decorate them. Stick them to the back of the tube and voila!


Symmetrical butterfly pictures
Fold a piece of paper in half, paint two large blobs, one on top of the other, on one side of the fold, so that it looks like one half of a flying butterfly. The paint must be applied quite thickly so that it transfers successfully to the other half of the paper. Add some drips of contrasting paint on the blobs. Whilst the paint is still wet, carefully fold the paper along the fold and press down from the outside edge of the paper towards the fold. The image should now look like a butterfly! Once the painting has dried, they can use more paint and felt tip pens to add details such as antennae and a body.


If you love what they’ve done and want to share it, we’d love to see any of your little ones art-work. Just send it in to us and we’ll put it up on the MooBaa little stars section of our community pages. You never know, your talented little ones might just produce something to rival a childhood favourite of MooBaaKids – the fabulous The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Since it was published in 1969, the story of the caterpillar who munches his way through the story to become a beautiful butterfly has entranced millions of children. It’s been enjoying something of a cult revival recently but we’ve checked online and there are currently 11 copies in at Skipton library at the time of writing…we’ll race you! x

What's on, Summer fun!

The summer holidays seemed to go on forever when we were little but not as long as they can seem to stretch now when there are children to keep entertained! We’d love to start off by talking sunshine and long hazy days but this is North Yorkshire and we know you’re not going to fall for it! We’re all hoping for summer sun but realistic enough to know we need alternatives too.

It’s hard to keep track of what stops over summer and what continues so we’ve done a boredom-busting round-up of what’s on over the coming month or so to make sure your little ones are kept happily occupied.

Let's hope it looks like this!

We want to wring every last ounce of fun out of summer so have set up a new page on our site to list exactly what’s happening and where. For all the details please check it out - What’s on, Summer fun. You’ll find information about the children’s fun area at Aireville park including rides, slides and candyfloss; meet-ups; messy play; stay & play and sensory play sessions and lots more. Many of these activities are £FREE!

www.malhamdale.com/showindex.htm

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our website with year-round information. Our Events page is absolutely jam-packed to the rafters with family-friendly local events. There is something on almost every single day over the summer holidays - including festivals, village shows/galas, kids’ craft workshops, theatre performances, outdoor play events, and much, much more – again some of these are £FREE! We will blog in the run up to our pick of the best events to remind you!

There’s also our Things to Do section. This should definitely keep you busy with loads of indoor and outdoor options. And because we are pretty optimistic and keeping everything crossed for those sunshine-filled hazy days we’re all hoping for, we’ll also point you to the walks page. We live in an amazing part of the world – what better time than summer to get out and see it.

We don’t want to completely jinx the weather but we’re also working on a new parklife section dedicated to free local parks and gardens, as well as our lowdown of top spots for perfect picnics. So keep your fingers crossed with us and let’s hope the sun smiles over Skipton soon!

Deer shed at Thirsk!

Ok. Hands up. We should have flagged the fantastic Deer Shed Festival up sooner but we got so carried away with launching MooBaaKids and all the other fun stuff in the pipeline that it got lost in the mix. It’s been listed on the events page though so hopefully you’ve all spotted it anyway and had a look. But if not – here it is flagged up in full so if you can ditch your other plans this weekend and pack quickly it’s not too late!


It’s the family-friendly festival’s second year and there are currently 200 tickets left for the 5,000 ticket event - enough for a great atmosphere but not so many that you can't get out of the car park. I Am Kloot is headlining with other top acts such as The Leisure Society, The Go! Team, Frankie & The Heartstrings and Caitlin Rose.


Sky At Night is I Am Kloot's Mercury prize nominated album of 2010 and as a tribute to their headline performance under North Yorkshire's night skies, there’ll be loads of Sky At Night type things to do including after-hours star-glazing, a cosmodome, themed kids workshops and cabaret.


The festival site at Baldersby Park, Topcliffe, Thirsk (about 40 miles from Skipton) will open at 3pm (tomorrow) 22nd July, the arena will open at 5pm for food and drink, entertainment will start at 7pm. Friday entertainment is centred around a cabaret performance in the Big Top but there’s one music stage running too. The Friday ticket is optional.


Saturday is the main music and arts day, three music stages, loads going on! Sunday is a Long Goodbye. Coffee, newspapers, organised kid's sports, live ambient electronica cafe in the Big Top, crafts market, a birds of prey display, nature trails and more. The festival site will close on Sunday at 4pm.


An adult weekend ticket is £59, a child (aged 6 +) weekend ticket is £15 and under fives are £FREE. Camping in a tent is free and all kids’ activities are free unless stated otherwise on the website at www.deershedfestival.com

It's launch day!

Hello and a very warm welcome to the launch of MooBaaKids…we’ve run what we’re doing past family and friends and are now throwing open the doors to everyone. Thank you so much for the excellent feedback so far. As a result we’ve had a bit of a facelift, packed in lots more features and are now officially raring to go!

The first thing we hope you’ll notice is the way MooBaaKids looks. This is all thanks to the super creative talent of Laura Steele. She listened to what we said we’d like, sprinkled some magic over it with her own ideas and interpretation and has created an eye-catching logo and colours across the site that really sums us up. We cannot thank her enough for offering to help, praise her work more highly or recommend her freelance graphic design and illustration skills more strongly. You can contact her at laurasteeledesigns@gmail.com

As well as the style, we’ve worked on the content too and added even more. We’ve added six new buggy-friendly walks on our walks page for you to get started with – let’s hope last week’s sunshine wasn’t it for summer! We’ll just quickly point you to the Malham Cove walk as the peregrine viewing point will only be there till 31 July. If the sun does shine again, it’s a great, inexpensive day out for all ages.

We’ll soon be filling in the blanks on our new parklife section with tips on the best parks around and how to get the most out of them as well as working on our community area – how to get linked up with other people and share what you’ve been up to.

New events and activities are being listed all the time and each week with the blog we’ll flag up some local events or other ideas for inspiration (it’s the Yorkshire Day countdown next week, tha knows!) – we’ll let you know via facebook about any big things we’ve added but if you keep checking back, you’ll most likely find new things.

We have already had more than 75 people ‘like’ us on facebook which has totally exceeded our expectations but the more the merrier – everyone’s welcome! And the quicker we get to a 100, the quicker some one gets to win the fantastic BabaBing! changing bag in our prize draw. So its time for you to start spreading the word - get your friends to like us on facebook now! And if you’ve already done that (thanks!), what are you waiting for? Have a leisurely look round MooBaaKids and let us know what you think…enjoy! X

Strawberry fields forever…or the next couple of weeks at least!

Nothing screams summer like fresh fat red strawberries. And nothing screams summer fun with the kids more than juice-stained faces and strawberries crushed in tiny palms! There’s not long left of the strawberry picking season so why not get out there over the next couple of weeks to pick some of your own?

Alongside a few punnets ourselves, we’ve handpicked three of the nearest to Skipton and hope your little ones enjoy searching out the juiciest, reddest strawberries they can find!

* Gledstone Gardens at West Marton, near Skipton (approx 7 miles) grows table-top strawberries at their kitchen gardens. This can be a stretch for little ones so might be worth taking something for them to stand on.

* Strawberry Farm, Birstwith, HG3 3AW near Harrogate (approx 20 miles from Skipton.) As the name suggests there are strawberries aplenty here for your little ones to munch and pick.

* Wharfedale Grange, Harewood, LS17 9LW near Leeds (approx 24 miles from Skipton). The furthest away of our picks, Wharfedale Grange is happy for you to make a day of it and take a picnic and if the weather turns there’s a barn for sheltering in. As well as strawbs, there are also rhubarb and broad beans until August 1, blackcurrants,whitecurrants, and redcurrants until August 14, and tayberries and blackberries until August 30. And from picking to pecking - there are also ducks waddling round for extra entertainment!

We’re all no strangers to the fresh weather round here but it turns out that strawberries aren’t so accustomed – they don’t grow up here past the end of July as a general rule. Fruit seasons always vary so it’s always vital to contact the venues first to make sure they are open and have sufficient stocks left before you make the journey out there. It’s also a good idea also to check whether you need to take your own containers to collect in and to get there early in the day for the best fruit.

As you know with toddlers, it’s best to go prepared with a packed lunch and drinks, a camera and sunscreen (hopeful!) or wellies and rainwear. A top tip is to wear old clothes and to take baby wipes for juicy fingers and faces!

Once back with the pickings you could get stuck in and scoff the lot with a dollop of ice cream – or why not make some strawberry milkshake? Quick, easy, cheap and delicious!

200g hulled strawberries

200ml cold milk

200g vanilla ice-cream

2tbsp honey

Whizz all the ingredients in a blender and enjoy!

We’d love you to let us know if there are any PYO places closer to home or any you particularly recommend for children so we can share it with everyone. 

And we’ll keep you posted on where to pick fruit for free locally once things start to ripen off a bit more!

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Welcome...and win!

Hello and welcome to MooBaaKids! We are a newly-launched brand new website run by volunteer mums who want to share what there is to do with little ones in Skipton and the surrounding area.

Whether you’re looking for advice during pregnancy, baby classes, toddler groups, things to do, sources of support or even ways to get in touch with other parents and carers then we hope MooBaaKids will be your first port of call. While there’s information already out there in various forms, we wanted to put it all in one place so it’s quick, easy and enjoyable for you to find just what it is you’re looking for.

To celebrate our launch we’re giving you the chance to win a fabulous changing bag stocked at John Lewis worth £58, courtesy of the Keighley-based (very generous) company BabaBing! Once we have 100 likes on our MooBaaKids facebook page we’ll generate a winner at random. If you’re not on facebook then don’t despair – if you CONTACT US with a top tip or some site feedback, include your name, and put BabaBing! in the header, we’ll add you to the draw. Watch the site for news of the winner!

MooBaaKids is still just a baby itself and we have lots of big ideas about how to add to what we’ve started. We’ll continue to improve it as we go - for example we definitely plan to include information for parents and carers of children with disabilities and we’ll also add pictures as the site grows. Each week we’ll highlight exciting new local things to do or not-to-be missed events. We’d love you to let us know if there’s anything you think we’ve missed or anything you want to share with us.

We hope you enjoy what we’re doing so far and that you’ll pop back soon, let us know your thoughts, like us on facebook and spread the word to your family and friends!

Enjoy!
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If you have any questions about the way this site works, simply want to say hello, want to provide some feedback, or if you’re interested in advertising your local event or business on MooBaaKids, please CONTACT US