Build-A-Bear Workshop

The making is the outing here, which is what separates Build-A-Bear from the shops around it. Children move through the steps in order — choosing the unstuffed bear, filling it, adding a heart, giving it a name — and staff walk them through each one, so even quite young children can do the work themselves rather than watch an adult do it for them.

Outfits and accessories are chosen at the end, and a small recorder can be sewn in so the bear carries a voice. The whole thing takes long enough to feel like an event and not so long that a toddler runs out of patience, which is why it turns up so often as a birthday treat.

Being inside Sylvia Park, it works as the anchor of a wet-weather afternoon rather than a trip on its own.