Category Archives: Child development and play

Amazing achievements in Autumn

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I am so delighted by Joss’ walking, there’s nothing like walking hand in hand feeling her little fingers stroke the palm of my hand…until she tries to wriggle free and run away!

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I blogged about our Autumn box recently, it’s been lovely to play with, the pinecones are a big hit so I think we’ll gather more to explore and then maybe do a spot of painting and glittering for a Christmas activity. I’ve loved hearing her talk about the trees and the ‘leafs’ this week, a free, fun activity for an inquisitive tot and a reason to get out in the fresh air to gather more stocks as the leaves get crumpled and break apart!

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This is my entry to the Center Parcs and Tots 100 November challenge. If I’m chosen, I would like to visit Whinfell Forest

Messy play, what’s stopping you?

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What if you have a toddler and understand why messy play is important, but you can’t stand mess and different textures yourself?

This is sort of my dilemma, I say sort of as I feel the fear but do it anyway, and in the course of the last few months I’ve developed a few ideas for lessening the mess that some of my readers might find helpful.

1) Do it somewhere else

I’ve blogged about supporting our local Children’s Centres, many offer opportunities for messy play, I’ve learned a lot about development through them and Joss has had great messy fun! In the early days before I discovered Pinterest I thought messy play was just painting, but we did food play, shaving foam art, fake snow etc and it exposed me to mess away from my own home, a great intro to messy play!

2) Proper preparation prevents a poor performance

I find that if I plan a messy session properly it reduces my anxieties about mess. This means having a bath run ready for Jossy if we’re paining, having flannels at hand and plenty of plastic sheets for the floors, I have some that I cut and edged so theory can go in the wash after a rough wipe down.

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3) Try messy without the ‘wet’ textures

Why not try something that explores other textures? One we like is putting down a piece of sticky back plastic sticky side up and taping to the table, then we use glitter, paper strips and newspaper cuttings to make a mess free picture whilst using pens and crayons for mark making too

4) Keep fuss to a minimum

I don’t really enjoy having sticky or wet hands but having Joss has exposed me to this more, so where possible I get involved and try to think about her learning and see it as an opportunity to re-learn to enjoy textures myself.

5) Contain mess for short bursts of activities

If Joss is bored I use the highchair as a good base for some ‘fruit painting’ with mashed berries and chunky fruits, she gets messy, enjoys a snack and draws on the tray with her snacks. Its also a good place for small activities like play dough etc.

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First Words Taxedo / Tagxedo Tutorial

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I had some positive comments on my post about Joss’ first words and some readers were interested in how I created this little picture showing her new words. I used a website called Taxedo / Tagxedo and thought I’d do a little tutorial so that you can do the same! It’s at www.tagxedo.com

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You can either point Tagxedo to a website, your blog perhaps, and have a tag cloud created out of common words on the site, or write a string of words as I did.

You may need to install Tagxedo first:

1 First Words Taxedo Tutorial

Click on Load on the left and type your text in the box:

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Click save and share to save your design and upload to your blog as you would any photograph, and remember that you cannot use Tagxedo for commercial purposes! Oh and it’s quite addictive!

Bright eyes

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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!

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Gathering items for an Autumn box

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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.

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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!

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Toddler Play Monday and Autumn Fun

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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!

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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!

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Children’s Centre Funding Proposals

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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:

The Facts

  • The proposed budget cuts may result in a 56% reduction in Gateshead Sure Start centre funding.
  • If these cuts go ahead some of Gateshead Sure Start centres may be closed.
  • It is not known yet what the criteria will be for closing centres; it may be down to areas of higher disadvantage or it may be down to current centre usage.
  • Sure Start staff members may face disciplinary action if they help with this campaign.

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.

All About Me

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I was tagged in this All About Me meme by the lovely Chantelle from Mamamummymum which originated on the wonderful Gina’s Cold Tea and Smelly Nappies blog

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First of tell us your name and what you do……

I am Angela, Mammy to Joss, wife to Alex, part time charity project manager, part time student, full time ‘tired busy but just keeps going’ person!

I live at home with…..

Alex, Joss and our dog Toby. I’m writing this from home on a wet and windy day, I look knackered, but on a good day we look like this:

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My favourite thing to do is…..

Heading along to the Farm at the end of our street for a walk, to feed the animals and a breakfast in the cafe is always a welcome treat on a day off

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My favourite thing to eat is……
Ooh, tough one, I just love to eat! If I really had to choose then homemade pizza, I love bread and cheese!

When I get cross I……

Stay really very quiet for a while, then I explode, I’m not proud of it but am learning slowly to get a handle on it!

Sometimes I worry because….

I worry, that’s right folks, I am an anxious sort of person generally so I get caught up easily in worries, and then worry about my worrying. Sometimes it feels like I carry my worries around in a suitcase and sometimes I get them out and unpack them to get some space, I am learning to leave things out of the suitcase and forget and move on about others.

My favourite book is……

Alice in Wonderland, young or old it’s pure magical escapism, and the fancy dress options are endless!

My favourite toy is…..

My tablet, as I use it all the time for uni work, but my favourite of Joss’ toys is her Lego, I very much get involved in playtime and am a big kid at heart!

 I dislike…..

Empty chocolate boxes, dark winter days and itchy scratch wool

When I grow up I want to be…..

A fun parent to this lovely lady with lots of creative ideas in all aspects of life!

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So now I am to tag 5 others to take part, if you’d like me to tag you please leave a comment!

My first tagee is Jen Palmer from http://www.smilesandtrials.net – hi Jen!

And finally, don’t forget my competition to win one of five Nursery Trader VIP passes is still running here!

Play ideas meme

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As you know I’m quite new to blogging but I have seen some brilliant linkies, including the weekly ones I take part in, from Podcast Dove and Ethan’s Escapades.

I love the sharing nature of blogging and wanted to get some ideas from other parents about toddler play ideas. We are short of space, on a budget and have a little girl who is very very active. I thought I’d start a toddler play Monday meme and seek my first tagee this week.

So here we go with our three questions:

What’s the activity?
How do we do it?
What did your little one enjoy about it?

What’s the activity?

We tried a spot of highchair cornflour gloop! We heard about this at our local Children’s Centre and thought the highchair could be a good place to contain the gloop til we source a cheap messy play tray!

How do we do it?

Mix two heaped tablespoons of cornflour with water until you have a gloop in a cup, or mix it straight onto the tray like we did for floury then wet fun! Then get your hands in, get little plastic toys in or a cheap paintbrush!

What did your little one enjoy about it?

Joss loved the gloop despite an uncertain start, look at her face! The gloop is so strange it looks wet but feels solid and you can move it around but if you try to scoop it it runs like water through your hands! Hard to describe, you’ll have to try it yourself!

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Its pretty easy to clean up but do be aware it could be drain clogging so try to scoop as much as you can into an empty milk carton!

If you’d like to get involved and don’t want to wait to be tagged then grab my blog meme button! The next blogger to post next Monday will be In The Playroom – I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

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What’s the Story?

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What's the Story?

Last week Northern Mum shared a post about her daughter’s hip dysplasia here http://www.northernmum.com/2013/09/hip-dysplasia-why-we-should-burn-forward-facing-baby-carriers/ and talked about forward facing children’s carriers where little one is not knee to knee. I read some of the comments with interest, particularly those about little one’s not being able to see properly when facing in, and I wanted to share another option. My what’s the story features a soft structured carrier or ‘buckles’ carrier that allows for a baby on the back positioning, knee to knee, as you can see Jossy has a great view and the carrier suits from birth to toddler and beyond, and we’re both really comfy as you can see, two miles into a three mile walk with a 21lb 16 month old!

I don’t want to weigh in on the debate about carriers, but I do think people should do their own research, so I would recommend the TICKS carrying card http://slumber-roo.co.uk/downloads/TICKS.pdf and hip dysplasia resources http://www.hipdysplasia.org/developmental-dysplasia-of-the-hip/prevention/baby-carriers-seats-and-other-equipment/