Fun At Home

Review – disco puppy, Ipswich Art Gallery

This morning a friend of mine and our combined children (2 mums 5 kids) all took on the Ipswich art Gallery to try the new interactive arts program for kids called “disco puppy”.  It’s a free event that’s running until 1st February and I found it made for a terrific morning out.

Firstly parking is an issue, there may be somewhere better to park but the parking that’s closest on the road map turned out to be for the council only. We ended up having to find street parking and had 2 cars in different streets. Then it was just a short walk into d’Arcy Doyle place to find the gallery which was well signed. The Investa Children’s gallery is on level 2. What greeted us was a well organized room for kids to have some fun with craft and dancing.

The disco craft is all about making your own funky disco glasses. There are 3 designs for the template glasses, normal, star and heart shaped which you then cut out and decorate.  The kids and parents then have loads of fun using sticky tape and bits of craft items to make their own marvelous glasses. Another craft table is set up with all manner of crafty bits for you to design and create belts, necklaces, bangles and anything else that your imagination can whip up.  Now you would think that all this craft stuff plus kids could turn the place into one giant mess. But someone has already thought of that and there are many volunteer staff ready to assist where necessary and keep the room clean.

Now that the kids are wearing all the right stuff they may like to try cutting loose on the dance floor. Again there are at least 2 volunteers here to make sure the fun doesn’t get out of hand. ie the bigger kids don’t squash the smaller kids. So its shoes off and with disco ball rotating you can watch as your disco puppies strut their stuff.

There are 3 big screens and the staff can rotate the puppies on screen to choose which puppy dance they will play for the kids to follow. The moves are all pretty simple and with the volunteers helping the kids are soon into a dance that reminded me of something between line dancing and the bus stop. Of course no one cares if you just wanna do your own thing. Parents are encouraged to get jiggy with it with their kids, and for the kids whose mums did dance with them you could see that they got so much more out of the experience.

When you’ve finished with your disco items you could add them to the wall if you don’t want to take them home. (the glasses not the kids). I also suggest having a quick play with the monitors you find on the floor, they run a cleaver little paint /draw program. Although the program is a bit slow in keeping up with small hands it’s fun to watch the kids interact with this simple computer.

Now if you are planning to go I suggest you try to do it out of school holiday time, or go when it opens or late in the afternoon. The reason is the space isn’t all that big and I found that there were quite enough people in this room just this morning. During school holidays it will be very crowded I’m sure. There’s also a limit as to how many kids can be on the dance floor so I guess sometimes there will be lining up.

We all enjoyed our Disco Puppy experience and had a great morning out.

© 2008 Brizzy Kidz.