slides | JahBella

The very first time we visited the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden, Jah was a mere 5 months old infant. I remember Joel and I pushing him around in his infant car seat cum stroller and taking a stroll through the ‘little park/garden’. Quite obviously we didn’t find anything suitable for a 5 month old and proceeded to forget all about that little place in the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Fast forward almost 3 years later and now with 2 kids in tow, we decided to head over to the Jacob Ballas Children’s Gardenfor one of our weekend morning outings.

The Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden is free of charge and the only requirement is that kids are accompanied by adults and adults are accompanied by kids. I found that requirement quite cute. :p Oh and also no food and drinks a lot so please feed the kids before going there.

We fed Shaun the Sheep before our visit and we got a happy sheep!

The garden has a small water play area (mainly equipped with little jets and sprays on the ground), a sand pit area, lots of interesting fruits and plants growing along the pathway, a suspension bridge, a nice treehouse with 2 slides and a large sand area as well as lots of other educational areas for the other kids. We spent almost 2 hours at the gardens and most of our time was spent at the treehouse and exploring some of the little nooks and crannies of what Jah calls the deep dark woods! We even had some fun narrating and role-playing the Gruffalo story while exploring the ‘woods’.

We spotted bananas on our walk in…:)

Mummy! The bananas are green! My favourite colour!

Quick guys!!!

Huge treehouse!

The garden is supposedly targeted at 5 year olds to 12 year olds (especially the more educational activities) but my 21 month old toddler and 3 year old kiddo did just fine although you will probably want to keep a close watch on those age groups and follow them around. We also saw lots of kids their age who were happily enjoying the water play area and the other sand pit.

Think the sand there was quite tasty too…

Come meimei…korkor wait for you..

Meimei! We are going on a mission!

Whee!!! Byebye!

A mouse took a stroll in the deep dark woods, a fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good!

Be prepared for the kids to get alittle grubby with all the sand and sweat but nothing a little water and washing can’t solve.

Literally a tree house…

And yes they entered it..

There is also a little café at the entrance of the garden and that was where we headed for our quick lunch. The kids were pretty wiped out by the time we were ready to leave so we figured rather than pack them off somewhere for lunch, a quick fix at the café was just perfect.

The seating area is very family friendly and they even had little chairs and tables for the young ones. The seating area can get pretty packed at times but you will eventually be able to get a seat if you wait around alittle. We were fortunate to find empty tables as we were exiting. The café has a wider ala carte menu however I didn’t notice it and ended up ordering their set menus. The meals took about 10 minutes to be served which was perfect for famished and impatient children. A wonderful morning in all and definitely adding it to our list of places to go that won’t break the bank. 😉

Grubby, sweating…

Thirsty…hungry…

JahBella’s Mummy

Apart from impressing us with their rooms and service, Hard Rock Penang wowed us with their ultra child friendly facilities. The main draw of the hotel for families would be their awesome pool area. It’s almost as if the pool was made to cater to every segment of guests that Hard Rock Penang could possibly think of.

Pool and beach view from our room

Sandy area close to the beach

We have the pool with its waterplay area for the little ones and then the slides which were not too thrilling so that the little ones could go on it safely. It also catered to the tweens and the young at heart adults like myself who could ‘pretend’ to use it because my child wanted me to follow him. :p

We also have the pool area which was filled with a sandy bottom (I think this might be a Hard Rock feature) except in this case it is found near the area leading out to the real Batu Ferringhi Beach.

And last but not least we have the pool area where pool side rooms could access directly to and also certain pockets of deeper waters to discourage the younger kids and provide abit more peace for adults who want to lounge around.

Besides the pool, the Hard Rock Penang also has a very good kids club. While we didn’t get to try the kids club programme which included cooking and art classes. We enjoyed the toys and equipment within the kids club and it allowed us to distract Jah when we needed to pack to move rooms. In fact Jah was more than happy to be there and kept asking to go over. I was super surprised by this and he actually allowed me to leave him there for a little while when I had to go back and check up on the packing. Jah is ultra clingy to me and the fact that he could let me go and just hung out with the kids club facilitator, is testament to how comfortable and friendly the environment is.