Role play is such a vital part of a child's development. Talk to any Early Years practitioner and they will tell you about what an important stage it is and why pre-schools, nurseries and reception classes all have role play areas and how much the children gain from playing in them. It's part of how they make sense of the world around them and understand their roles within the world. It stimulates their imagination, aids their social development and can also help children understand scenarios that they may have encountered in real life. For most children role playing home situations is ... read more
My Mermaid Lagoon – Marina’s Lagoon
Little Miss C is still very much of the age where she loves making small worlds and role playing with them. Often I will find shoe boxes, or other things stolen from the cardboard recycling, full of soil, sand or small pieces of paper to represent some sort of a landscape and then tiny crafted things to represent houses and other household things. Fairies, mermaids, horses and unicorns seem to feature prominently in them at the moment and so being asked to review My Mermaid Lagoon from Interplay was perfect timing. Mermaid Lagoon gives you everything you need to create a magical world ... read more
Brio World – Village School Playset
It will come as absolutely no surprise to regular readers when I say that Master C is train mad. He creates huge wooden train worlds around the flat and is always being inventive and coming up with new things to go in his worlds. He was therefore thrilled to receive the new Brio World Village School Playset to review. The Village School Playlet is a bit different to many of the other Brio World elements as it doesn't have train track running through it, yet you can assemble it next to an existing piece of track easily enough. It consists of two rooms in the school and a ladder to climb up ... read more
How to Inspire Children’s Creativity #PlayTheHero
One thing I particularly love about blogging is just how diverse the range of things I'm asked to get involved with are. One week can see me writing or talking about everything from parenting issues, to food and drink products, to toy reviews, to children and adult fiction books. Earlier this week was a perfect example. In-between writing about Paddington Bear I also took part in a Google Hangout on behalf of Philips and BritMums where psychologist Chireal Shallow was answering questions from a group of bloggers about how to inspire your children's creativity. Will the long summer holidays ... read more