Dear Mummy, I’m a massive fan of Julia Donaldson. The first book my mummy bought for me was Room on the Broom when I was a baby. Julia’s fast-paced rhyming prose is engaging and my folks find it fun to read to me. With illustrations by Axel Scheffler, the book is very bright and colourful. I can nearly recite the book by heart and finish my folks sentences when they read it to me.

The storyline is that the witch and her cat are happily flying through the sky on a broomstick when the wind picks up and blows away the witch’s hat, then her bow, and then her wand! Luckily, helpful animals find the missing items, and all they want in return is a ride on the broom. But is there room on the broom for so many friends? And when disaster strikes, will they be able to save the witch from a hungry dragon? We’ve read the book hundreds of times, we’ve walked the Adventure Trail at Anglers Country Park in Wakefield, watched the theatre performance at the Haymarket and love the website with free resources.

However we’ve just had our first taste of Room on the Broom messy play with Messy Monsters and it was great! They had loads of tuff spots with sensory activities for children focusing on the main points from the book.

We’ve visited Messy Monsters in Basingstoke before, so they need little introduction on the blog. They organise themed messy play sessions and this time it was all about Room on the Broom. We loved their interpretation of the book and found the tuff spot activities fun at £6 for an hour session (adults go free).

We’d love to replicate some of these activities at home and they’d be great for a themed party or Halloween. Mixing potions and creating spells was my favourite bit and all you need is a cauldron and some ingredients! We enjoyed the ‘gloopy’ mud, where monsters rose up from the sticky mess and we liked playing with the jelly and finding hidden artefacts. Jumping into the pond with the dripping wet wand and finding the frogs was great fun.

There are so many ideas to take from the book and the official Room on the Broom website also has some great free resources on it too, perfect for a rainy day. We’ve scoured Pinterest and made a board of the wonderful stuff relating to Room on the Broom too. I think I know what my next party is going to be all about!!

Let us know what you think of the ideas!

Love Bella xx