Last year Joss was dressed as a sweet little frog
This year’s effort was a bit hurried but we had great fun at the Farm at the end of the street, a dino or two showed up and Joss was delighted by a chance to try her first pair of wellies too!
I had a guest post published on the Great British Nappy Hunt blog this week, on why Cloth Isn’t Scary, and so here’s our competition entry for the GBNH competition:
This cropped up on my Facebook feed and I thought it was too sweet not to share, we’ve all had days like this, so thank you to my nest maker, you’re the best!
I love these two weeks of the year, Halloween followed by Bonfire Night; it just brings out the child in me, lots of happy memories and things to look forward to, and it feels like Christmas and the promise of more family time is creeping up too.
Speaking of family time we were lucky to have coincided Mr B’s holidays with the Roker Park Illuminations. We both remember this from our childhoods and when we saw it was on again this week we planned a little trip out. We weren’t disappointed, the Alice in Wonderland theme was lovely, it was totally unspoiled as there were only a handful of stalls and food vans and there were just lots and lots of little bright eyed children enjoying the displays. Joss knows the words lights, bunny rabbit and cat and so she was very chatty. We bought a little glow wand for on the way home and enjoyed some quality time on a really lovely evening!
We haven’t had a new words post for a while, we have been hearing some strings of words this week too!
Joss has recently added these to her repertoire!
I blogged about treasure baskets a while back. Today we wrapped up warm and wrapped Joss in our winter wooly sling and headed out for a walk.
We gathered items for an Autumn treasure box, leaves, pinecones and conkers, a seed head, and other nice bits and bobs that we can explore together. I have in mind to create a lion picture with yellow and orange leaves for the mane, I think we might also gather a big pile of leaves for in our yard and play with the wooden animals in them on a nicer day! I really enjoyed going out as a family today, and having a purpose in mind, to gather items, made it a really worthwhile fun walk!
For this week’s Toddler Play Monday another blogger, the lovely Anna from In The Playroom, is picking up the Meme mantle with a great idea for cooking with kids, but I do have a quick idea to share. We saw lots of ideas on pinterest and I liked the idea of a threading project for Joss. This was a very quick activity which we tried one work morning when I was getting my hair dried! We got a piece of ribbon, and cut two large toilet roll inners up into inch thick pieces, Joss enjoyed threading them onto the ribbon and I think next time we’ll decorate them with some washi tape to make it more eye catching!
I couldn’t resist sharing this photo from this weekend, I find this time of year tough for the weather and dark days but there’s something really fun about wrapping up warm and heading to the coast for a blustery icecream!
This weeks What’s the Story? is a very simple one, a photo from earlier this week taken on a walk. Joss has just started to look up when we’re out and about, looking for stars, aeroplanes and clouds. Mr B and I love this walk that we do, I’ve often blogged about it. We like to spot things we haven’t seen before, seasonal changes and of course patterns in the clouds!
When I was younger my parents used to bemoan the fact that we kids weren’t interested in the world around us, now I know that comes with age!
So what do you see in this photo?
At first I pointed it out because I saw an elephant, but once Mr B had spotted the crocodile I saw it more clearly too, snap snap!
This week at work I was engaged in responding to Budget Proposals around Adult Social Care. In doing some research and reading I came across a campaign urging me to respond to proposals around our local children’s centres. I have blogged about their importance before here.
The local campaign page can be found here:
You however, can help!
I was doing some further reading around policy and development this week for a secondment I applied for recently, more on that later, but I came across a great read arguing for longer term thinking about children’s services, you can read more here
This was my response on Facebook:
As their parents face cuts in other areas of their lives, job losses, reduced family budgets and increasing prices the idea of cutting their children’s opportunities to access play and learning facilities that support their development, whilst often supporting parents’ mental health and opportunities to engage with other parents is not a sustainable long term solution. Children’s Centres should be seen as a long term community asset, and other options for their future explored. As a new parent last year I was offered no antenatal classes, there were no support services for new parents, and I had three health visitors in six months. The Children’s Centre baby massage class was where I learned to parent, the sensory rooms provided free opportunities to talk to other new parents and the brilliant parent outreach workers provided a friendly welcome and sympathetic ear. I fear for new parents who couldn’t access these opportunities, there is very little available for under fives outside of them.
Please do respond to similar consultations in your own local authority areas and get involved in the debate about funding our children’s futures, its vital we speak up now before it’s too late.
I’ve mentioned before I like crochet but I’m not very good at it and tend to go off track a bit and get bored, hence making smaller projects rather than the blankets that I love but would take me the next five years to complete. This wee cowl took around five hours, not bad for an amateur and was a good excuse to practice the basics, it’s made of a chain 100, then a row of double crochet, a row of treble and another double, a row of three doubles and three chains repeating to make some little holes, and then the first three rows repeated, and joined with a darning needle. I am quite pleased with it now I’ve seen it on her!
