Whilst we were in the New Forest over easter, we visited the New Forest Wildlife Park. We haven’t visited a wildlife park for ages, so I thought this would be a lovely idea.
The first thing you walk through when you arrive, is the small children’s play area, so of course my children wanted a play first. It was a fantastic play area for small children (up to age 6). It had lots of roped climbing equipment that you normally find in bigger children’s adventure playgrounds, only it was in miniature! The children absolutely loved it, I thought it was so cute! There was also a lovely sandpit with a digger, so that kept BB amused for ages.
Once we managed to prize the children away from the playground, our first stop was the butterfly house. I wasn’t sure how the kids would react to lots of butterflies fluttering around, but there wasn’t very many at this time of year, so it was good to just spot a few.
The best part though, was the cupboard of all the cucooned butterflies, not yet emerged. It was amazing, I’ve never seen that before. The children were fascinated, especially BB. We talked to them about the life cycle of the butterfly using ‘the very hungry caterpillar’ as an example. It was a great learning experience for all of us!
We walked on further, to the otters and happened to be there just at feeding time, so enjoyed watching them devour lots of meat. It was a bit smelly though! 
We really did like the otters, they were very cute, we could have watched them for ages.
We visited the deers, which was lovely, as we could get really close to them and the children even got a stroke. They said they felt very soft (hmm, not sure about that?).
We visited lots of other animals whilst here, but these were our favourites.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the big children’s adventure playground, which BB used, but my 4 yr old girls only climbed on the lower ropes. BB even went across the very high, long rope bridge.
After we had seen all the animals, we went back to the small children’s play area for more fun. I just had to add this photo of Boo as she was so proud of the sandcastle she made!
It was a lovely day out for all of us, we saw lots of animals and learnt loads too. We had fun in the play areas and loved every minute of it.
