The girls and I were invited to join Wild Rumpus for a trip to The Spellbound Forest at the weekend. Created by the team behind the Just So Festival, The Spellbound Forest weaved it’s magic through Delamere Forest in Cheshire, bringing to life four English fairy tales with a mixture of story telling, theatre, music, dance, woodland crafts and toy making. The event was like a forest school on a grand scale, full of inspiration and ideas to bring back and adapt to keep the outdoor story telling alive at home.
Talking to children about cancer
How do you go about talking to children about cancer? When someone in the family is facing cancer and you are dealing with a painful range of emotions yourself it can be hard to know how best to involve your children. Do you shield them from the situation or be open with them and show your own upset?
A teacher at my daughters’ school died recently. She was a much loved and respected member of the school community and had been teaching the very youngest class in the school. The children were just four and five years old and the teaching staff made the decision to involve them, and the rest of the children at the school, in a very thoughtful process of understanding what had happened to their teacher. The whole school was involved in creating a very personal and joyful remembrance of their teacher, combining stories, poems, pictures and memories, which I believe gave them all the opportunity to learn many lessons about love and caring, grief and remembrance as well as coming together as a community to support each other and think about what is important in life.
Having seen myself how sharing with children what is happening and giving them ways to be involved in the circumstances has helped my own daughters, I am very pleased to be able to tell you [Read more…]
Walk to School Week ideas for themed walks
Did you know next week is Walk to School Week? We walk to school everyday, come rain or shine, and are very lucky to have a tree-lined cycle path that runs almost the whole route from our house to school, giving the children a car-free space to run, skip and scoot. This daily walk brings such an important breathing-space to our morning, a welcome transition after the hustle and bustle of packing lunch bags and locating coats. We’ve also been joining in with Living Streets #mumswalk project this month and creating a Pinterest gallery of our walks to school. I know not everyone is able to walk the school run, but if you’re tempted to give it a try for Walk to School Week, here are some ideas you could use to make the A to B journey that little bit more interesting.
Walk to School Week ideas [Read more…]
Cardboard box play: make an imaginary land
Never mind the contents, empty cardboard boxes are such treasures. My daughters have been know to ‘reserve’ cardboard boxes as they arrive, especially if they are extra big or unusual shapes. This weekend there were no squabbles as the packaging for two fold-up camping tables provided them each with a big cardboard boxes they could create with.
Cardboard box play: make an imaginary land [Read more…]
Air drying clay models: let’s go camping!
One of the ideas we had for our Screen-Free Week was to have a rummage around on our craft shelves to see if there were any long-lost art materials that we might like to try. We struck gold with two packs of air drying clay that Father Christmas had brought in the girls’ stockings and which had been put away in a post-Christmas tidy up and forgotten about.
Modelling with air drying clay
Have you used air drying clay before? It’s not too messy and quite easy for young children to use – my 5-year-old had no problem manipulating the clay into the shapes she wanted. The girls had wooden skewers and scissors to use to cut and make marks with but mostly just used their hands. The clay warms to the touch and is a great work out for fine motor skills. [Read more…]
Art for babies
Have you heard the research that the best art for babies is bold black and white images? The contrasting pictures are believed to help a baby focus their vision and develop their still fuzzy eyesight. There are lots of black and white art for babies available in books and as posters but why not make your own? Creating some baby art is a lovely way for siblings (or in our case cousins) to give a gift to a new baby in the family.
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