Easter family events in Shropshire

Staff at a Shropshire arts and entertainment venue are looking forward to hosting their Easter Bazaar. The special Easter themed Bazaar at the Hive Music and Media Centre will take place on Saturday 30 March, delivering more than 30 individual stalls for people to browse with the best of Shropshire’s independent traders on show!

The unique event will offer a diverse selection of interesting stalls, celebrating and showcasing an array of crafts-people and small businesses from across the region.

Stall-holders exhibiting for the Easter event include knitwear, baby items, hair accessories, ceramics, greetings cards, scarves, stationary, books, clothes, , jewellery, bags and much more. Entry to the event is ￡1 for adults and proceeds from the entry fee will support the Hive’s work as a youth arts charity, delivering creative outreach projects and arts opportunities to disadvantaged young people across Shropshire.

Over Easter weekend Sunnycroft, the National Trust villa in Wellington, will be decorated for a traditional Easter at home with the Dining Room laid for dinner and beautiful Edwardian Easter cards on display around the house.

For Easter weekend in the house there will be a free Easter Chicken trail for children to spot some feathered friends, whilst on the main lawn will be a new 2013 Cadbury Easter Egg hunt as well as colouring activities to get stuck into. During the main school holidays there will also be a hare themed trail outside in the garden for children to partake in some Easter fun along with games such as skittles, badminton and croquet on the main lawn.

For those who won’t be hunting for eggs the Edwardian style tea-room will be serving simnel cake and hot cross buns, which can be enjoyed inside or out on the veranda.

Sunnycroft is open on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 10.30am to 5pm, with last admission to the House at 4pm. Normal admission charges apply, Cadbury Easter Egg trail ￡2.50 per child, School holiday trail ￡2 per child.

A highlight will be the unusual pastime of egg dancing, which will take place opposite the Print Shop. Once blindfolded, the townsfolk will dance across the street without stepping on eggs that are carefully placed along their route. After the demonstration, visitors are invited to have-a-go with mini Easter eggs and lollies as rewards for all who complete the course without stepping on an egg!

You can also take part in the ‘hunt-the-chick’ competition, following a trail of clues around the recreated Victorian town; join a sing-along in the New Inn Public House and try hands-on workshops as well as watch open-air performances by the Prince Albert Players and Kaleidoscope Theatre.

Families should come wearing their best Easter Bonnets, as the Town’s Milliner will be judging the finest creations at 2pm in the Pleasure Gardens; there will be a prize for the winner and every youngster taking part receives a small Easter egg.

Open 10am to 5pm Blists Hill is one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. A great value Annual Passport Ticket allowing entry into all ten museums, valid for twelve months and unlimited return visits, costs ￡24 per adult, ￡19 for the 60 plus, ￡15.25 for students and children and ￡65 for a family of two adults and all their children aged up to 18 years in full time education (terms and conditions apply); under 5s free. Activities and workshops vary day-to-day and some carry an extra charge in addition to the museum admission fee. Individual museum entry tickets are also available.

Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre is putting on a whole host of activities for families at Easter 2013. Good Friday afternoon, 29 March 2013, is the Easter Eggs-travaganza featuring a wide range of creative activities and the classic egg and spoon race. The following fortnight will see the Digging Archaeology event take place, where children can learn from what was discovered in the ground.

The Easter Eggs-travaganza, running from 2pm to 4.30pm on 29 March, gives families the chance to get creative together. Decorating Easter Trees to take home, making Easter Bunnies and 3D eggs, and designing Easter hats, are some of the events that families can get stuck into, and it doesn’t end there. Once you have completed your projects, there are races for the bunnies, a parade to show off the Easter Hats, and a prize for the best one.

Perhaps most dramatic is the Scrambled Eggs event ,where you are challenged to design a contraption to beat gravity and protect a chicken’s egg on its return to earth after it is fired into the air on a rocket.

There is also the Easter Chicken Trail, which will take you out into the wild meadows around the centre.

The cost is ￡4 per child (but children must be accompanied), which will include refreshments, and is suitable for accompanied children aged 3-11, and Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre has planned an indoor alternative day should the weather go all British.

Digging Archaeology will run from 1 to 2.30pm Mondays to Fridays between 1 April and 12 April. The activity will look at artefacts found and what we can tell about the individuals they belonged to all those years ago, as well as matching pictures of Iron Age artefacts with what they looked like new. The activity costs ￡3 per child and is suitable for 5- to 11-year- olds. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Use your imagination to design and create fun ‘sticky critters’ from craft materials inspired by the suction capabilities of an octopus, then discover how long they can cling to an upright glass surface. The drop-in Nature’s Engineers family workshops will be held at Enginuity, near Ironbridge, Shropshire during the Easter school holiday from Friday 29th March until Sunday 14th April, between 10.30am and 3.45pm.

Paper, card, plastic and other materials will be used to make the designs based on frogs, geckos and octopus or any other creature of your own invention. Activities will vary from day-to-day and some additional costs will apply.

Open 10am to 5pm Enginuity is one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. A great value Annual Passport Ticket allowing entry into all ten museums, valid for twelve months and unlimited return visits, costs ￡24 per adult, ￡19 for the 60 plus, ￡15.25 for students and children and ￡65 for a family of two adults and all their children aged up to 18 years in full time education (terms and conditions apply); under 5s free. Activities and workshops vary day-to-day and some carry an extra charge in addition to the museum admission fee. Individual museum entry tickets are also available.