Firstly a little bit about ourselves. My husband Mark worked for a music company for 20 years but aside from music, his passion has always been sport and coaching children. Although his job allowed little time to indulge in this passion. When he was younger he coached football at youth clubs in London and more recently coached on a “Football in the Community” project for a professional club (5-10 yr olds).

My own background is also mainly sports orientated where I went from working and teaching exercise classes in a health club to managing a small gym in London where I had the chance to successfully introduce “Fit Kids” to the club (under 10’s). I continued to do this until the birth of our first daughter, Lucy, when I decided to give up full time work and later qualified as a childminder working part time from home.

By the time our second daughter Mae had come along, probably like most of you we had visited all the play zones, play structures and farms you could imagine. Although most of the time we could never doubt the fun our children had, we always wondered why we had to travel out of London or onto an industrial estate to get to a play zone.

It started to make us think how great it would be to have a play zone/activity centre within a London community, so our search began. Eighteen months on, we have opened “It’s a Kid’s Thing!”

So why do we think we are different?

Simple really, because apart from wanting to be a successful business we want to be part of the community and support Mums and Dads who visit us by offering a whole range of activities apart from the play structure. Sessions like Baby Massage and Post Baby fitness mean that we will see children come to us from babies right through until they are nine years old, offering them the daytime and after school activities that are much needed to keep them fit, healthy and able to communicate and socialise with other children in a safe and fun environment. Some of our activities may have a slightly competitive edge however our professional co-ordinators will disperse the current myth that children cannot have fun when there is a winner and a loser.

However, the people we really hope see the difference are our Mums and Dads. For starters our 40 seat café has quite an adult feel with papers and magazines available. The fact that we are not a large site means you can relax, while your child plays within view. If they decide to venture into the activity room then they will be with one of our co-ordinators. Our specially designed toddlers area is situated with access from the café allowing you to either interact yourself or let your child play alongside other toddlers while you are sitting only a few steps away.

Our menu gives you Healthy Eating options for the whole family (babies as well) if that is what you would like, and yes we do serve good coffee in nice cups! For those little emergencies there are spare nappies and wipes available. If you do decide to hold your child’s birthday party with us then we promise you won’t have to lift a finger, everything will be taken care of by your party co-ordinator.

If we do not meet your expectations then come and speak to myself or Mark as we are a family business, run for families and I am sure one of us will be available.

Claire & Mark Robinson