Easter Fun At Home With Skem First

3 months ago I started a Facebook group called Skem First and as I write this post the group has over 1500 members.

My plan was to create a central hub for all of Skelmersdale to bring together local businesses, schools, community groups and residents. I wanted to create a place for everyone to get or share information relating to this amazing town.

I had no idea that Coronavirus would make this group an essential place for people to come together. People are sharing stories, having fun and most importantly spreading awareness of what help is available, during lock-down, and where from.

Local businesses have been able to reach large numbers of residents and offer deliveries of essential items, community centres have been able to let vulnerable groups know what they have to offer and group members have had a place to do daily puzzles, share pictures, ask for advice, help & guidance. The group has grown into something much more than I ever imagined and I’m so thankful to every member for that.

That leads me to this Easter Weekend….

The plan was to have an outdoor Easter Treasure Hunt. Local businesses had very generously provided Easter Eggs and financial donations so that Skem First could hold a completely free Easter Egg Hunt. This would have been similar to the one that I put together at Christmas, no catch, just turn up and hunt for prizes! We were all set and then pushed into lock-down so everything was put on hold.

With prizes and eggs sat in my garage I decided that we shouldn’t cancel the celebrations but rather just have them inside. Why couldn’t we have a Treasure Hunt? Each person looking for the same objects but in their own houses! Why couldn’t we have an artwork competition and find someone to judge them?

2PM Easter Sunday

We started the activities with an easy game of find the emoticons that had been hidden in various posts and pictures within the Facebook Group.

We had 3 different sets of Emoticons to find including a Bunny 🐰 a Chick 🐤 and a Church ⛪. A total of 10 icons were hidden and if you found one, that hadn’t already been found, you won an Easter egg! All 10 were found within an hour (It was actually quite a bit harder than I anticipated and clues were a welcomed late addition).

3PM Easter Sunday

We started the Indoor Treasure Hunt and the rules were simple. 20 rounds of hunting treasure. I’d post an everyday household object and you had to find it, in your own house, post a selfie to Facebook. If you were the fastest you’d win 3 points. If you were second fastest, 2 points and everyone else 1 point each. The top 5 points after 20 rounds would all win a prize. Take a look at some of the pictures from that below..

A few of the rounds included:
Finding a broom and hairbrush
Balancing a frying pan on your head
Doing a handstand wearing your school coat
Sitting down for dinner with knife, fork, plate & ketchup.

I hope that you can see from the pictures below, everyone that was involved had a blast!

5PM Easter Sunday

All the kids in the group had been running around their houses for almost 2 hours, mine included. It was time to try to settle everyone down. I spoke with West Lancashire Mayor, Gaynar Owen, and asked if she’d mind judging an artwork competition. The Mayor agreed and we had our final activity of the day. The rules were as follows:

2 hours to design a piece of artwork that was either relevant to the current situation or something Easter related. The top 5 designs would win a prize. We had 15 children enter and choosing 5 winners was very difficult. The Mayor and I agreed that whilst we should still pick 5 winners, every child that entered deserved to win an egg.

Here’s all the entries, they were FANTASTIC…
Well done to the 5 winners too the first 5 pictures are the 5 winners.

Delivering Prizes…

With social distancing a real concern and doing all we could to not spread Coronavirus, we delivered all prizes to the winners by placing each set of prizes in their own carrier bags and then knocking and running.

The day was a tremendous success, everyone got to be part of a community event, right from their own houses.

Here’s a few pictures of some of the winners with their prizes… (The following pictures were taken by someone in the household and sent to us. We didn’t take them ourselves).