Welcome to Little Oaks Play Village, a wonderful and exciting new play concept idea, which is aimed at children from babies and toddlers up to the age of eight. This amazing new venue has been hand designed with children in mind, a child-sized village has been hand built, offering seven individual areas of creative play.
It is the brainchild of two former primary school teachers, Beth Williams and Kat Jefferson, who have both spent a decade teaching at numerous primary schools throughout South Wales before deciding to take a new career path by opening a play village at Langland Park Industrial Estate.
Being mums of young children themselves, Beth and Kat noticed that normal soft play centres are great for getting children to be active, but not for challenging their minds through creative play. On one occasion at a child’s party, Kat noticed that her daughter spent almost two hours with a toy kitchen – role playing by making meals with toy ingredients, pots and pans. Upon seeing this, the idea was born and after a lot of research, the two teachers found that play villages like their Little Oaks idea were already quite popular in America and Europe.
These creative play villages have also been found to be quite beneficial to help with children’s imagination, creativity, co-ordination, as well as improving their social skills and verbal communication.
“In recent years, a lot of fun play zones have popped up throughout the country,” Kat told Voice. “We felt that these venues were great for getting children active, but a little more could be done to test children’s minds and help them learn.
“This is why we decided to make our venue as much fun as possible, but also to challenge the children’s minds through creative play. Children love to copy parents and now with our individual zones they are able to do that, but within each zone they will find questions and tasks – helping with their problemsolving capabilities.”
Within Little Oaks Play Village you’ll find a green common that has a huge wooden oak tree, a family home, a hair and beauty salon, a construction site, a supermarket, a fire station and a veterinary.
“The response since opening has been incredible,” added Beth.
“Both the children and parents/carers love it – which is another thing we set out to do, we wanted to get parents to get involved. Don’t worry, parents and carers can still take a break, catch up on work, check their social media pages, and enjoy freshly prepared food and drink at our café if they need to. We serve a variety of sandwiches, baguettes, toasties, hot and cold drinks, as well as a tempting selection of cakes, which have been sourced locally from Shauna’s Sweet Treats in Caerleon.”
Play at Little Oaks is managed in two and a half hour sittings, which run from 9.30am until 12pm, from 12.30pm until 3pm, and from 3.30pm until 6pm (Monday to Friday), and is limited up to 30-35 children per session. This has been done so that each child who visits has adequate time at each station and so that the venue is not too overcrowded (an advisory maximum of five children per play zone). Weekend play is from 10am until 12.30pm and then from 1pm until 3.30pm, Saturday and Sunday. Play is priced £3.75 per session for toddlers and pre-schoolers, and at £7.95 for children aged four to eight.
As the seasons change, the village will have a particular theme and as Halloween is almost upon us Beth and Kat are super excited to announce that they will be hosting four Halloween Parties in the run up to the spookiest holiday of the year. These will be available on the following days at the following times:
Monday, October 28, 3.30pm - 6pm
Tuesday, October 29, 3.30pm - 6pm
Wednesday, October 30, 3.30pm - 6pm
Thursday, October 31, 3.30pm - 6pm
Please come in your scariest costume. Children who book for the party will receive a spooky snack box with a Halloween treat inside. There will be a ghoulish treasure hunt, with each child receiving a prize. Tickets are priced at £10 per child – book early via the Facebook page to avoid disappointment!
Little Oaks Play Villiage - Unit C1 & C2 Langland Way, Newport NP19 4PT
01633 548181
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