Instead of a New Year’s Resolution, how about asking your family what they’d like to do or learn this year? Resolutions are great, but a desire to learn something new or ‘do’ or ‘make’ something special are longer-term goals which can be focussed on and put to one side at times. A ‘project for new Year’
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Making dens is a serious business in my household: barely a day passes without sofa cushions and blankets being rearranged into a den! We live in a flat with no outside space to call our own. Despite park trips and sports clubs, there remains plenty of energy, so in the absence of a garden our inside
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Kitcamp: a new inspiration for loose parts play You may not have heard the term ‘loose parts’ before, but you’ll recognise the type of play. Imagine a child tinkering with a collection of seemingly unrelated objects, e.g. sticks, pine cones, cardboard tubes, shells and buttons. They’ll use these bits and bobs to build a tower,
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We know play is important. It is a child’s work. But is there more to it? With current media awareness around mental health, we reflect on how play can make a difference for a child’s long-term mental wellbeing. Mentalhealth.org tells us that 1 in 10 children and young people are affected by mental health issues.
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Now fall off… As a kid, at the end of a riding lesson I was always encouraged to fall off my pony, learn to tumble, and getting up unhurt, dust off my knees and get back on again! What I was learning was that falling off wasn’t a big deal. For kids, learning to “fall off”
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I rarely say “be careful” to my kids… only “concentrate” or “awareness…” (in a sterner voice). It’s the most effective way of getting them to slow down and think about what they are doing. I don’t want to make them fearful of what they are doing. Moreover I feel it puts the responsibility in their
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