How do you find baby and toddler activities in London?

[rachelkohhs]

Is it just me or is finding baby/toddler stuff to do in London way harder than it should be? 😅
I feel like everything is scattered across all manner of websites, Instagram, blog posts…
How are you all actually finding things? Is there somewhere obvious I’m missing or is it just a bit of a free-for-all?
Would love any tips — slightly losing the will to scroll 🙃

Sign up to all the museums mailing list (loads have dedicated bookable play spaces) and they email you appropriate events. Whereabouts are you based? There’s loads on but I agree all the info isn’t easily reached in one place (Happity for classes etc is ok though and searchable by postcode) but I get lots of info from a local parents group I’m part of and word of mouth through that.

Join a Facebook group for your local area.
There's usually groups advertised on there or you can ask and people will tell you what's on the area.

London is full of free groups for kids! Most libraries do rhyme time as a minimum. Childrens centres often do stay and plays, as do churches. Then theres all the other places, museums, playgrounds, city farms, leisure centres etc etc.

I saw lots of social media and asked other mums. I also asked local eg stall groups. Happily is a good website too

Happity

Mine are grown up now but grew up in London.

Church toddler mornings - really nice but variable
Story time at the library
We went to the park a lot
The South Ken Museums
A local garden centre had fish sheds and the DC loved it - pretend aquarium trip
The 1 o'clock club was great bit they have gone now and I can understand why, ours was used by middle class mums and the resource wasn't meeting the people who needed it

Much was word of mouth and once you got chatting you got word of other activities. All of the above was no more than 20p. Soft play was a new fangled thing but we did it every 4-6 weeks and other paid stuff was a weekly music activity.

This is really helpful — thank you!

Out of curiosity, do you find yourself checking multiple places regularly (like local parent / FB groups + Happity + emails etc), or do you mostly stick to one and hope for the best?

And has anyone found something that actually pulls things together well, or is it just a bit of a juggle for everyone?

Also, if you’re in any particularly active local FB groups for this kind of thing, would you mind sharing them? Would be really useful to join and see which ones people actually use (feel free to DM if you’d rather not post publicly)

My SIL when she lived in Hackney just signed up for whatever she was interested in and went along. Mostly baby classes. Where she’s moved now there’s a community centre that has classes, library a good shout too.

Happily is good. Also follow bablands on instagram for special events

@rachelkohhs for Facebook groups just type in the name of your area and see what comes up.
There are some groups specifically for "mum" things, some for general.
For example I know one site called "Streatham Mums". Most are basically called that (but with the area name different - obviously 🙂)