This weekend will have families flocking to The Children’s Food Festival because not only is it being held in Oxfordshire, but it has a fantastic line-up of celebrity chefs to inspire our little ‘uns, and an even more impressive list of events.

Your kids will be able to rub shoulders with their favourite chefs, including Stefan Gates from CBBC’s popular Gastronuts, babyfood legend Annabel Karmel, Sophie Grigson, Raymond Blanc, Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hugh’s mother who wrote The Good Granny Guide), Jamie Oliver’s famous dinner lady Nora Sands, Sam Stern, the teenage cook and even film star Greta Saatchi. All will be taking turns throughout the weekend to demonstrate and inspire children and families to cook on the Northmoor Trust’s estate and farm in south Oxfordshire.

Highlights include hands-on cooking, open fire cookery, bicycle-powered smoothie-making, the Smell Tent and The Chocolate Tent.

There’s also patrons Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson’s cookery demonstrations, a 40ft inflatable pink sow showing farmyard drama, an animation entitled Eat A Rainbow and the UK premiere of Hungry Planet, What the World Eats, a photo exhibition of what the average family eats in 16 countries across the world.

Sophie Grigson jumped at the chance to become Patron of the Children’s Food Festival. Because not only is she a well known TV chef, but she also lives in Oxfordshire.

Having just finished filming a travel series on Moroccan food, and an episode of BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, she is now concentrating on making 2009’s festival a huge success.

“Last year was the festival’s first year when 15,000 people poured through the gates to roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty at Drayton airfield,” she says. “But this year will be bigger and better. What you have to remember is that everything here is for the kids. It’s not like other festivals where there might be the odd tent. It’s all for them.

“It’s the first festival of its kind probably in the world and we hope to get the children involved and really into it.”.

Raymond Blanc, far left, is taking time off from filming BBC2’s The Restaurant to appear at the Children’s Food Festival. As a firm advocate of chidren and food, he opened the first children’s cookery school 13 years ago at his famous restaurant Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons in Little Milton.

He can’t wait to enthuse his young audience, spending Saturday demonstrating how to cook some simple dishes to prove it can be “fun and yummy.”

”In France children are part of the culture of food,” he says.

“They are like small seeds that you plant in the earth and then they explode into full force. Food needs to be celebrated and children need to know that it’s not just about putting a plastic bag in the microwave and eating it in front of the TV, but that cooking together as a family and sitting down to talk and laugh and eat and argue is part of life.

“And children are the most responsive audience you can have because they really enjoy it and immediately engage.

“So I love doing the Children’s Food Festival.

“It is always exhausting but I will go to bed on Saturday night a happy man.”

See childrensfoodfestival.co.uk