The first episode of Hey Duggee aired on CBeebies on 12th January 2015. Five days later, I had my first child. It was probably another 9-12 months before I caught my first episode, but I remember immediately thinking it was something special. My first badge was the Surprise Badge.
The idea for The Fan Club Badge came to me in 2019. I had a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old who were both obsessed with Hey Duggee. It was one of the few programmes on Cbeebies that we liked watching as a family to the point that we would get excited and gather around whenever new episodes came on TV. As adults, we appreciated the different levels of humour and found ourselves becoming just as obsessed as the children.
Aside from just watching it on TV, we would also use Hey Duggee to structure our play. We would copy the things the Squirrels did to get their badges. Finding leaves and making collections became go-to activities in the garden. I’m no super mum and rarely plan activities in advance, but I found myself scouring Pinterest for play ideas to help us get our badges.
It was at this point that I had a thought, if I was searching for Hey Duggee activities then surely other parents were doing the same and it would be really helpful to have ideas for each badge in one place. This website appeared fully formed in my mind. I would have a simple summary for each episode and add detailed posts with activities, books, bakes and makes to be added over time. I could include links to blog posts and recipes that I like.
Then 2020 came along and those simple summaries got longer and longer, eventually becoming a labour of love. I had to fit website building in between homeschool for the older one, childcare for the smaller one and a full-time job. It’s taken me a long time but I have finally built a website that fulfils the vision I started with and I’m looking forward to continuing to make it into something amazing.