Look Out! There are Kids in the Kitchen with Betta Living

Way back at the start of the summer, the Brats were intrigued by a big red box which turned up at our home.

Inside, was a challenge set by Betta Living Kitchens to entertain those most picky of kids without spending hundreds of pounds in the holidays.

They put together a list of 20 fun things to do throughout the house and garden, everything from rainy day cooking kits and crafts to sunny day planting activities and games, and asked us to have a go at some of the ideas for ourselves.


One thing the kids absolutely loved were the Muppets
face masks, Mini loves The Muppets and immediately decided to twin Miss Piggy with various items from her dressing up box. Littlest decided to show off his Kermit mask to our neighbour's child, which set off quite the fashion show.

The great thing about the activities is they are simple, and pretty easy to set up. So, if you want to get on with some housework and entertain the kids at the same time, it was nice to open the backdoor and give the children a set of kid friendly ten pin bowls which kept them amused for hours.  After the housework was taken care of, it was great fun getting into the kitchen and helping the children to learn how dough works to make pizza (as well as getting to eat something you've made afterwards), as well as reigniting a love of making and sticking with felt animals and shapes.

Littlest, being a fan of noise, thoroughly enjoyed using wooden spoons to create a noisy racket with pots and pans (otherwise described by him as "being like David Bowie and drumming and singing loud"), and Mini liked the quiet enjoyment of decorating paper dolls in bright colours.

It can be easy to spend lots of money on the children at any given time of the year, rather than looking back to my own childhood which was spent making and gluing and acting out games in the garden and beyond. I recall many happy days with a book which had a whole heap of ideas called "101 Fun Things for Kids" which included a whole chapter of ideas to send SAEs to different people like the RSPB and be sent a load of things to colour in and birds to spot- all for the price of two stamps. Of course, its now easier and cheaper to do as we can use their websites for the much the same thing!

I was impressed with how simple and cheap the activities were and how they engaged the children for hours- rather than hearing them loaf around watching TV and asking for the occasional sweetie, they were laughing and joking and in many cases, learning new skills too.

I would definitely recommend a return to old school ways of putting the fun back into weekends without breaking into your savings!

*We received a box of goodies to try out from Betta Living to compile this post*