TheBoyAndMe | TheBoyandMe

Toy Story: The Bear Facts (Guest Post)

March 14, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 1 Comment

In today's guest post, the author explains the background behind the teddy bear.

A couple of days ago I came across a couple of DVDs which I hadn't watched for years. Among them was the wonderful Pixar film Toy Story, an old favourite of mine, so that evening I settled down on my couch and played the DVD, happily reliving the adventures of Buzz Lightyear, Woody and their friends. By the time the film ended, and no doubt influenced by some of its themes, I found myself reflecting on the reason I had not watched the film for such a long time, namely that I now have a new "toy"- my computer. The films I watch nowadays are computer files, not DVDs or videos. And although the Toy Story franchise shows no sign of flagging (I gather Toy Story 4 is now on the cards) it struck me that the DVD format was rapidly becoming outmoded and is probably on the way out. My DVD player may itself soon be discarded, like a child's toy which has fallen out of favour.

While many of today’s toys may be considerable more technologically advanced than those of yesteryear some of the old favourites never seem to lose their appeal. The Teddy Bear, for example, continues to exert a unique hold on the human psyche. It is now 111 years since the incident took place which triggered the ursine phenomenon. It was 1902 and the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt was out in the wilds on an unsuccessful hunting trip. The others in the hunting party caught a bear and tied it to a tree, so that the President could make an easy kill. When the President showed up, however, he refused to shoot deeming it unsportsmanlike. A newspaper cartoonist depicted the scene and consequently New York shopkeepers Morris and Rose Michtom started a company that produced the first Teddy bears.

At around the same time the Steiff family in Germany came up with a design for stuffed bears and introduced them to Europe at the 1903 Leipzig Fair. The rest, as they say, is history.

Pipecleaner Space Hat

March 13, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 14 Comments

I have never understood the appeal of pipecleaners. They bend and make cool shapes, but for a pre-schooler I've always thought they were a little pointless and hard work.

And then I discovered (via Pinterest) a few activities which suggest that they can be used as a tool in threading and beading exercises.

I set out a tray of materials for The Boy as an invitation to explore and play.

We used:

metallic coloured pipe cleaners
buttons of various sizes
maxi Hama beads
a metal sieve
silver confetti strands

The pipecleaners are much easier to use for threading than a shoelace as they stay rigid and don't flop over while trying to fit the beads onto the end. This also makes them easier to shape when creating a design. One more bonus is that the metallic fibres covering the wire enable beads to stay in place and not slip down to the end.

We started by poking the wire end into the sieve and bending it over 'inside' to prevent it from being pulled out. Then The Boy was keen to have a mismatch of buttons and Hama beads on the pipecleaners, alternating and contrasting the design. Buttons that have multiple holes are really useful to thread two pipecleaners through. To ensure the buttons and beads didn't fall off, we tucked the loose end back into the sieve and bent the end over again.

Threading with pipecleaners

Threading is an excellent activity for pre-school children as it helps to develop fine motor skills, hand to eye co-ordination and the pincer grip; all of which are needed to develop pre-writing skills. Pipecleaners are a very useful tool for threading because of their rigidity.

And it's great fun too!

A Silent Night With A Chillow (Review)

March 12, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 3 Comments

"Constantly in search of the holy grail – sleep"

That's a description of me from my twitter bio, and two years after writing those fateful words they remain just as true.

Now don't get me wrong, I am far from incapable of falling, or staying, asleep. In fact, I'm naturally gifted at making myself go to sleep in most sedentary situations; on a train, on the sofa, in the car (not driving!), on the beach, you get the picture. Therefore the problem doesn't really lie in not being able to sleep, it's more about staying asleep once I've drifted off on that cloud.

Someone is determined to prevent me from having a full night's sleep. And he's about three and a half foot tall.

Although, to be fair to him he is not the only reason that I don't sleep as well as I used to; I also get incredibly hot in bed, very easily. We tend to counter this by having the window open throughout the year, and even in the depths of Winter use only a 7.5tog duvet. Still this doesn't always help.

Silentnight has carried out research which shows that 75% of adults are not getting a good night's sleep. I would hazard a guess that probably 60% of that group of people are parents and therefore have a small human interrupting their REM cycle on their behalf, but that does leave a whole group of people who sleep badly 'naturally'.

With the issue of my body temperature in mind, Silent Night sent me a 'Chillow Plus' to try out and to share my conclusions after a week.

P12981016a

The Chillow is a clever, albeit slightly bizarre concept. The pad measure slightly smaller than an average pillow and is designed to be slipped inside a pillowcase over the top of a conventional pillow, the Chillow Plus has velcro pads inside to hold it in place and prevent slippage during the night. Inside the plastic outer casing (the 'Hydro-soothe' membrane) is a Soothsoft® pad which uses 'specialised materials, fluids and laws of thermodynamics that creates a dry, powerless, thermo-regulating and memory foam effect'. It's basically a squidgy foam pad, but a bit more complicated.

To activate the cooling aspect of the Chillow you need to add 4 pints of warm tap water through the valve, reseal it and leave it to soak up the water and do its stuff for four hours. Once this has happened, then you need to remove the seal and roll it back up to push out any excess air. The Chillow is then ready for use. It works by absorbing body heat continually and then discharging the absorbed heat back to the surrounding environment. Strangely (and unlike a gel pack which needs refridgerating) it almost always feels cool as the user's body is is always warmer than the Chillow.

I've used the Chillow now for a week and has been extremely useful in cooling me down in a variety of situations, not just my head, and not just as night. I had a horrendous headache this morning and a lie down on the chillow for ten minutes really helped alleviate the pressure and fogginess. While the Chillow has been useful at night to lay my head on, it's actually been my feet that have benefitted most as they do tend to be excrutiatingly hot and painful at bedtime.

I only wish that I had owned this cooling pad during the last trimester of my pregnancy with The Boy when I suffered horrendously with Polymorphic Eruption of Pregnancy. I spent the final two months of pregnancy in absolute agony and crying; I was exhausted from a complete lack of sleep. At night, I had to sleep under a single sheet with ice packs against the part of my body that was in contact with the mattress because the increased heat made the rash worse. These ice-packs were exchanged ever hour or so for another one straight from the freezer. Only when I was freezing cold could I sleep. Having a Chillow would have seriously enabled my ability to sleep.

Thumbs up for the device which cools me down and allows me to sleep? Definitely!

I was sent this product for the purpose of this review, my opinion is honest and unbiased.

'Natural Childhood' With The National Trust (Country Kids)

March 11, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 18 Comments

USA
Australia
UK

Not winners of the Olympics. Nor are they the most wealthy in the world (although that might be true). The above ranking refers to the worst countries in the developed world for getting children outside and playing.

I'm a little shocked. More than a little shocked to be honest. I expected America to be pretty rubbish at encouraging outdoor play, but Australia? With all that open space and the wonderful environment? I am, ashamedly, not surprised to see that the UK is third though; the health and safety police combined with the fear factor of child abduction has fostered a generation of children who have an outdoor, roaming space which is 90% smaller than we did as children.

For the past sixteen months I've been a willing participant in the Country Kids weekly linky run over on the Coombe Mill blog. Country Kids is the brainchild of Fiona, who owns Coombe Mill (a family farm holiday location), and promotes outdoor play with your children. It doesn't have to be in the country (which is just as well as ours are at the beach) but it does have to be in the fresh air and encouraging a 'natural childhood'.

This 'Natural Childhood' I speak of is a movement to promote getting our children back into nature and helping them to rediscover the joys of outdoor play. On Saturday we were the guests of the National Trust at Nymans in Sussex, to find out about the 'Natural Childhood' campaign being led by many people including David Bond, Project Wild Thing, the National Trust, and many other agencies. All are united in their desire to see children climbing trees, getting mucky, and having old fashioned, outdoor fun.

Exactly what Country Kids stands for.

There'll be more about the campaign in another post, but for now I want to document a major change in my son.

This is The Boy who couldn't balance a year ago, who had minimal confidence in his physical ability, who wouldn't contemplate a cargo net or three step ladder. The concept of tree climbing? Never!

tree climbing

The middle photograph above shows The Boy arguing with Rob Cowen who was trying to tell him that he couldn't climb the pine tree as it had no lower branches. The Boy didn't believe him. He tried (and failed) but the point is that he tried determinately. Disgruntled, he went and climbed another tree.

And then, Rob showed us how to make a den. A den suitable for sleeping out in (if you are so inclined, I'm not) and one that was incredibly warm and dry.

den building

The Boy was in his element. That smile is not one which he puts on for the camera; it is pure joy.

Ticking off another items from their '50 Things To Do Before You're 11 & ¾', the bloggers' children then all sat around a campfire and toasted marshmallows. We had a minor incident when The Boy was daintily eating his in several bites and dropped it on the floor, but he soon made sure that didn't happen again by shoving his replacement in all in one!

We jumped up and down in muddy puddles, we raced up and down hills, we made friends. But above all else we had fun!

natural childhood

And if ever there was proof that the outdoors is good for a child, making him happy, raising his self-esteem, and giving him self-worth and confidence in his capabilities, surely this is it?

happy child

—

365 #10

March 9, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 21 Comments

Wow! And thank you!

Thank you so much to whichever kind souls nominated me for the Best Photography and Family Fun cateogies in the MAD Blog Awards, I am overwhelmed! Last year it was a real joy to have been a finalist in the awards, and even though I didn't win it was so humbling to have been nominated by fellow bloggers. I honestly did not expect to be in the finals this year as photography in blogging has really taken off in the past year with many linkies emerging every month. The fact that you guys still considered me worthy enough to be up there with the others, makes me very proud and possibly a little bit teary too. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

As ever, this linky only works because of people linking to it and then contributing their thoughts to others' posts.

Join in by entering the URL of your favourite photograph of the week (either a 52 or a 365 photo) and show some comment love to everyone else in the community. We've got a Facebook group, and now I've created a collaborative Pinterest board (if you'd like to collaborate, let me know and I'll add you).

Choose your favourite photo from the past week and link it up below.
Please add the badge to your linked-up post so that other people know how to find all the other fabulous entries.
If you can spare five minutes to comment on a few other entries I know they'd appreciate it!

Days 62-68 of Project 365

March 9, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 56 Comments

62-68 of 365

62. Shoot! (These are the seeds we planted a week ago in our gardening play table. They've really shot up, which means that I now have to find somewhere to move them to so they can acclimatise to the outside temperature. However, look to the back, the middle seed label was written by The Boy.)

63. The Sands of Time (We went for a long walk and cycle along Cardiff Bay Barrage today and played in the pirate play park there. We were the only people in the park for quite some time, which meant that The Boy had free rein over the sandy, sunken, pirate ship.)

64. Lick! (The first ice-cream of the year down the beach! The Boy had an eye-test today and he was meant to have eyedrops to test for a stigmatism, however because he held so still and was compliant during the test, he didn't need the drops which I was very relieved about. As a result it meant we were able to nip down to the beach and enjoy an ice-cream on the pier with nana.)

65. Bed Fellows (The Boy looked so peaceful when I went to check on him at midnight, so calm and serene. Oliver Monkey is never far away, and the week wouldn't be complete without a sleeping photo!)

66. Bubbles at Bathtime! (We had an extra long bathtime tonight where we had the bubble machine out, a pot of bubbles and the underwater light – all to remember a special little girl who loved bubbles.)

67. Catch The Pigeon! (Remember the Wacky Races song? Our weekly cycle ride along the pier was just like a scene from that today. The pier was deserted aside from a few elderly couples having their 'daily constitutional' and one or two brave pigeons. I say brave because once The Boy saw them he was determined to scare them away, something that made the grannies and grandads chuckle at!)

68.Splat! (We've been to Nymans for a National Trust event today as we are helping to promote the 50 Things To Do Before You're 11 and ¾ campaign. More to follow on this, and I've had to add this photo in at the last minute so please forgive any editing errors in this post!)

—

How To Teach Your Children To Cook (Guest Post)

March 8, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 2 Comments

Although cooking with children can be a lot of fun, it can also be quite a challenging experience. You need to watch them constantly, keep them interested and make sure they’re being safe. Here are some tips on teaching your children to cook.

First cooking 011

Fun recipe ideas

All children love cooking treats like fairy cakes, rainbow cookies and chocolate brownies, but it can be harder to get them involved with cooking main meals. Focus on the foods they love and practice making them from scratch. Research children cooking recipes to get some fun ideas.

You could teach them to make mini burgers, to which they can add cheese, bacon and salad, or you can show them how to make home-made fish fingers and mash. One of the easiest and best loved children meals are personal pizzas. Get them to roll out the dough, favour the sauce and grate the cheese. They can then choose all their favourite toppings to sprinkle on top.

Safety tips

It’s important to teach your children all the safety rules for cooking in the kitchen. While they are learning, keep them away from sharp knives and hot pans. Never leave them cooking alone and make sure you explain thoroughly how they should be using each utensil.

Put them in aprons to protect their clothing and teach them to clean up spills as they go, so that foods don’t become contaminated and they are less likely to slip over.

Explain fire safety and the difference between a normal fire and a grease fire. Make sure they don’t wear long sleeves which could catch fire. Also, tell them to use oven mitts instead of a tea towel to move hot pans off the stove, so that it doesn’t trail in the flames.

Dos and Don’ts

Do be patient. If you rush your children or criticise them they’re likely to lose confidence and give up.
Don’t get stressed. Accidents will happen – stay calm and show them how to do things properly.
Do make it fun. Take a leaf out of Mary Poppins’ book and turn household chores into games! If they’re enjoying themselves they are more likely to want to help out again.
Don’t push them too hard if they aren’t interested. Forcing your child to do something that they don’t want to can put them off for life! Let it go and try again at a later date.
Do cook foods that they are enthusiastic about. If they’re making a fuss about cooking healthy food then start off with baking a cake and, when they become interested, you can move on to other things.

rainbow pizza guest post

After a long day teaching your child to cook, you may feel like you never want to cook again! If you want to eat well, enjoying delicious and balanced meals, food hampers can be a solution.

Forman and Field, specialised in food hampers which range from everyday meal options, for those with busy lifestyles, to gourmet gift hampers for special occasions. Hampers can also be sent as presents – you can put together your own hamper with your children to get them involved in making a unique gift for someone.

Keep things light and fun and you’re bound to inspire your children to get cooking!

Eco-Climate Week Challenge

March 8, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 4 Comments

I always try to be a bit of an eco-warrior on the sly, which is why I'm currently sat here in my fleece with socks and slippers on, rather than turning the heating up another degree. The temptation's strong, I can tell you, but I shall resist.

And this week it seems significant to make that effort as it has been Climate Week, Britain's biggest climate change campaign, where people all over the country have hopefully been thinking about how they can live and work in a more sustainable manner. Quite frankly, anyone who continues to believe that the world's climate is NOT being effected by our behaviour, needs to remove their head from the sand, take off their blinkers and look around at what we are handing over to our children.

We were sent a number of items from Andrex to see how we could make some small changes as our contribution to Climate Week.

andrex ecoclimate week

We already compost as much as possible or use the council's food waste collection, recycle everything that can be, use reusable shopping bags (Wales charges 5p per plastic bag), and Mr. TBaM ditched his car eight months ago in favour of a bike, therefore the changes we made were:

fitted a Hippo water saver bag into the bathroom toilet;
worn socks, slippers and an extra layer rather than turn the heating up;
kept the heating below 22°C (believe me, this is huge for me!);
used a 'Showertime' to monitor and reduce the amount of water used when showering;
filled the kettle with the exact amount of water required;
used Andrex Eco recycled toilet paper;
walking to the town centre for shopping.

For more tips on how to make your lifestyle more sustainable and environmentally friendly, visit Andrex's Sustainability website.

What one change could you make to become more environmentally friendly?

A Special Little Girl (For Matilda Mae)

March 7, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 28 Comments

Last Summer I had the pleasure of holding a newborn baby. I'd known her mummy for two years and she had become a friend. Yes, an online friend, but a friend nonetheless. Before I met the little girl's mummy, I'd asked if I could have a cuddle from the baby and the mummy very happily agreed.

So at Britmums 2012 I had the pleasure of cuddling Jennie's youngest daughter, Matilda Mae. As I rubbed antibacterial handgel in my hands, I could feel a slight stirring. This was further compounded by the rush of affection and maternal instincts kicking in when I held Baby Tilda in my arms. I smelled her sweet, newborn smell, felt her little squiggliness and looked up at Jennie with tears stinging my eyes. She was the first baby that I'd held since The Boy was born. Suddenly all those desires for another child which had been quashed and locked away, rose up inside me and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted another baby.

That is the legacy that Matilda Mae has left me. Thanks to that beautiful baby girl and her very kind mummy, I've been getting help with my birth trauma from The Boy, and am making headway to extending our family.

The heartbreak that I feel from hearing about the sudden and unexplained death of Matilda a month ago, is nothing in comparison to how Jennie and her family feel. Yet I, and many other parent bloggers, feel connected to their loss.

Why?

Jennie asked me to write about why the parent blogging community has felt the loss of her life so strongly, this is being included in the funeral service.

Community and society evolve. In the 21st century where friends and family are separated by great distances, methods of communication have had to change for relationships to survive. Yet with this world of sending 'instant' messages virtually, time differences and busy lives create yet another obstacle, another barrier to feeling connected. Barriers which, to a new mother, can feel just as isolating as the geographical separation.

As a new mother, I discovered the 'world' of twitter, and in turn the online parent community. It's hard to explain how a group of people can find solice, comfort and friendship via the Internet, but they can. In the same way our parents' and grandparents' generations could be more open through a letter to a penpal, so can parents today. Friendships are struck up through real-time discussions on twitter; lives, hopes and dreams are explored through blogs. No-one judges or condemns; we are all parents, we are all people with feelings, and we are an army of moral support in each other's pockets. There is always someone there.

The parent blogging community is a special one; to show empathy, caring and compassion for a 'stranger' is humbling and restores my faith in humanity.

Most of us start blogs as a way of recording everyday life or verbalising our anxieties. We never dream that people are reading, enjoying, empathising; yet all too soon we find words of comfort and advice, experiences shared and solutions offered. Edspire is a blog that is full of a mother's love for her determined and amazing twins, and her miracle baby, Matilda. Jennie writes with such heartfelt emotion, sharing her innermost thoughts, fears and hopes and inviting the reader to be part of her life. I've followed the wedding story and the secret that was Matilda when vows were exchanged, felt the joy of a natural birth, the anguish of losing her prematurely.

Through blogs we see each other's relationships develop, marriages happen, babies be born and grow. We feel the pride when they sit for the first time, we feel the tiredness due to a night spent nursing a teething baby, and we feel the grief when one of ours is lost. Some of use will never meet in person (I am lucky enough to have met Jennie and to have held Matilda), but it does not diminish our bond.

Shine brightly Matilda Mae

(02.05.2012 – 02.02.2013)

Brain Games For Your Child (Review)

March 6, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 6 Comments

As a teacher, I'm only too aware of the need to develop problem-solving and thinking skills in children. It may seem unbelievable to some, but there's been a recent wave in education in the last few years where it has become apparent that too many years of 'chalk and talk' has created a generation of young adults who (apparently) can't process the important facts and have difficulty identifying the ways to solve problems.

And to be perfectly honest, it's not nonsense. Children have to be given opportunities to discover; just the same as they have to see play modelled in order to recreate it themselves, they need to be shown how to break a problem down into manageable steps and then piece it back together bit by bit to create a workable solution. In schools we have various ways to do this, identifying that Thinking Skills are a part of the Key Skills Framework and building techniques into lessons, as well as brain gym and creative thinking exercises where possible.

I happen to think that igniting that questioning process and stoking the embers is a really important part of pre-school development as well, and just the same as parents provide opportunities for developing reading, writing or 'rithmetic, then they should as well for thinking.

I've been sent a copy of the above book to review and have found it really interesting. The author, Robert Fisher, taught for over twenty years in schools in the UK, Africa and Hong Kong, and as a professor at Brunel University, there's a fairly good chance that he's going to be an excellent person to compile a book like this.

'Brain Games for Your Child' provides over two hundred games to help children build their thinking, number, language and social skills. There are games that focus on music and art, treasure hunts, card games, word and number battles that are games to be played by all the family. With a range of old favourites as well as new games, what is common to all the games is interaction with other people, enabling children to develop and enhance their communication skills, gaining a response to their queries and providing them with the opportunity to process what they've learnt with support.

I thought it would be a good idea if I mentioned a few of the games suitable for 3-6 year olds, although there are sections on 0-3 years, 6-9 years, and the older child. The section starts by reminding parents of the six things for a growing brain to function well: good food, drink, oxygen, physical exercise, rest and stimulus. In fact, each section of a different age starts with tips and information on that age phase, for example; 'try to use interesting and descriptive adjectives when you tell a story…'. Each activity listed also identifies the key skills enhanced through the game.

Balancing Act: (this involves the whole body and strengthens the pathways that link the two sides of the brain) balance a variety of objects on his/her head, challenge them to walk the whole length of the garden or hallway. [Key skill: physical co-ordination, self-control]
Blindfold Games: sit the child down with a blindfold on and creep around the room making small noises like whispering his/her name. He/she needs to point to the sounds heard. [KS: reasoning and visual memory skills]
Matching: Provide him/her with a selection of similar objects to sort into piles, or their own socks to pair! [KS: questioning, reasoning about cause and effect]
What is it?: Find some pictures of things your child knows in magazines, cut out the pictures and paste them onto a separate piece of paper. Hide each one in an envelope. Pull the first picture out of the envelope just far enough to the child to see a section and ask 'What is it?' Give clues, identify what they can see, help them make informed guesses by revealing a small section more until they guess. [KS: perception, prediction and language skills]
Musical jars: Use approximately ten identical glass bottles or jars, a selection of different 'drumsticks' and a jug of water. Fill the jars to a different depth and experiment with the different drumsticks to make different notes. Discuss the pitches and encourage him/her to create their own musical water melody. [KS: musical and auditory discrimination]

There are so many more ideas in this book including story telling ideas, rhyming games, memory games, drawing ideas, deduction games and so many more. I'm not going to list them all because then there'd be no point in reviewing and promoting it! Some of the ideas in the book are common sense, but sometimes we need them pointing out to us as parents to be reminded of them; something can seem obvious and non beneficial to us, but then we're not pre-schoolers are we? However, there is a wealth of activities in Brain Games For Your Child that aren't obvious and are really good ideas, using everyday household objects.

'Brain Games For Your Child' is available from Amazon for the bargain price of £9.60 (RRP £15.00) in paperback or £9.12 on Kindle.

I would recommend investing in this book because it's become a little bit of a Bible for activities in our house, and will last for years! On the Amazon page, there is a 'click to look inside' option to help persuade you of its worth.

I was sent a copy of this book for the purpose of this review, my opinion is honest and unbiased.