It’s always great to see a free event taking place in half term, and this week it’s a student run week of Roald Dahl activities in the Winter Gardens in Sheffield.We easily filled a good hour doing a treasure hunt and joining in lots of activities and earned Children’s University points too. The activities are all a bit bonkers – bonkers being the reason of course that Roald Dahl themed events are always so successful.

My absolute favourite was the activity where students had spent valuable time x-raying chocolate bars and you had to work out which was which. Despite the fact that an x-rayed mars bar looks almost exactly the same as an x-rayed double decker we got a full house. I’m not sure what that says about our diet.

We also worked out which healthcare professionals would be required for each Roald Dahl character’s health concern. I had no idea Miss Honey was pregnant and am significantly concerned for the BFG’s health. He’s in good hands I suppose.

It is a bit chaotic, but then that’s to  be expected for a free activity that’s suitable for 5-13 year olds in half term. Get there early and be prepared to wait a little (but then that’s a good opportunity to pop to Zooby’s). We added on a trip to the Millennium Galleries (including this exhibition) and the obligatory town trip to the book shop.

I then managed to leave the bag of books in the Body Shop because I was busy picking up spilled cress seeds from the James and the Giant Cress activity. Fortunately they are keeping the books safe for me so I obviously haven’t upset them too much with my compost disaster.

The event is running each day 10am-4pm, until Saturday when the theme changes to Science Alive. It looks from the information that lots of the experiments will be like those at the university open day we went to, so I’d definitely recommend this event too if you are looking for something to do.

Cross posted with http://www.beanreaders.com.