Personalized Gifts for Kids from TinyMe

 Win a £40 Voucher to Spend at TinyMe

Personalized Blocks

I do love the personalized gifts for kids on TinyMe.co.uk.  They have everything from bags to stationery to clothing to name labels.  We got one of their duffle bags a couple of years ago and it’s still going strong, my daughter uses it for her PE kit, the amount of stuff they need in primary school is nuts; including indoor and outdoor kit plus two pairs of shoes. Goodness knows how we remember everything each week. We also often use it for weekends away, squashes nicely in the boot of the car

Personalised Gifts for Kids.

The lovely folks at Tinyme are offering my readers a chance to win a £40 voucher to spend on some of their goodies.

Sandwich Bags

Whilst I was writing this post, instead of doing my work, I had a really good look through their site and am loving the reusable sandwich bags, no more fighting with plastic bags or the roll of clingfilm in the morning.  I guess you just turn them inside out and give them a good wipe.

Personalised Journal

 

My daughter is a bit of a magpie when it comes to Stationery, which I think is true about a lot of girls here age.  Apparently, you can never have enough diaries/journals.  One of her favourite things to do when her friends come around is to do a bit of diary writing, goodness knows what they write in them, but I do here a lot of giggling going on.  Tempted to get her a personalised journal for Christmas.

Free Christmas Printables

I also noticed that they have an entire section of FREE printables including some for Christmas, the activities are rather swish unlike a lot of the naff printables you get on line.  I love FREE!  I’m definitely going to do a few of them with my daughter in the build up to Christmas.  However, I have a sneaking suspicion mine won’t look like theirs.

Enter to Win!

To enter the competition simply use the rafflecopter form below.  Competition Ends on the 1st of Dec, UK residents 18+ only.  The full Terms and Conditions can be found on the bottom of the form.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I should probably get back to work!  Good luck and thanks for joining in.

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

Ski Lessons for Kids in the UK

Things to do during the school holidays near St Albans

During October Half-Term we had the opportunity to go to The Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead, we’ve been skiing there before and we had a sledging party for my daughter’s 6th Birthday a couple of years ago.  As a Canadian I was impressed with the quality of snow, pretty close to the real stuff.

As we live in St Albans, the Snow Centre is normally less than 20 minutes  away by car.  Unfortunately, on this occasion, the main road in was closed due to an ‘incident’.  Luckily,  we were able to find our way around the incident and weren’t too late.  We were actually on time but left us with less time to get kitted up – skis, boots, poles and helmets were included in the lesson.  You can also hire clothing if you don’t have any of your own.

Ski Lessons in Hemel

This made it a bit stressful as I hate being late.  However, the staff were excellent helping us get organised and calmed me down, it took 3 trips to the ‘clothing department’ to get the correct size snow trousers and two to the ‘equipment section’ to get the right size boots, which was not a fault of the Snow Centre and my daughter did wait till she had her boots on to tell us the trousers were too big.  Grrr!

Being half-term it was rather busy but it was all very well organised and flowed, after check-in you were guided to an area to meet your instructor and get ready.  It did look chaotic but it really wasn’t.

Fun for all ages

We had an adults lift pass and a private lesson for our daughter.  My 67-year old mother was visiting from Canada at the time, so we had to decide which one of us got the lift pass.  Coincidently she taught me to ski as a child, my first skis were 110cm and we did toy with the idea of sending her.  However, in the end, as she was only going to be with us for a week and we hadn’t seen her in 15 months, we didn’t think we should risk an injury, so we sent my hubby in the end.

Ski Practice in the UK

It’s like riding a bike…….

The ski hill is split into two sections, those who are proficient can whizz up and down on the left and the group and individual lessons happen on the right.  So hubby went off to the left, while our daughter went off to the right for her lesson and we went upstairs to watch from the viewing platform.  It’s been awhile since my husband has been skiing and he said it didn’t dawn on him till he got to the top of the drag lift that he may not remember how.  Secretly, I was hoping for him to bail so I could get some good photos, sadly he didn’t.

Skiing Lessons for Kids near London

My daughter’s instructor was lovely and patient.  She had our daughter going up the learner slope in minutes, she used great analogies like pizza slices to introduce her to turning and the snow plough.  She did spend a lot of time on her bum but had a brilliant time and as soon as she came off the slope, she asked if we could come again.

How to teach kids to ski

Après Ski

We finished of our visit with a bit of Après Ski in the Lodge Bar, where you are transported to Austria with a great selection of authentic Austrian dishes or a few of your favourites.  The prices were reasonable, great view of the slopes and fantastic atmosphere.

Apres Ski at Hemel Snow Centre

Food at the Lodge, Hemel Snow Centre

I think if anyone is considering a ski holiday or looking for something to do during school holidays, I would definitely recommend a trip to the Hemel Snow Centre.  You can book lift passes and lessons online or follow them on Facebook for deals and news.

Now your chance to win!

Hemel Snow Centre Family Lift Pass

The lovely folks at the Hemel Snow Centre are offering my readers a chance to win A family lift pass, 2 adults and 2 children, any time in the next 12 months.

To enter simply use the Rafflecopter form below.  The full Terms and Conditions are at the bottom of the form, but in short it’s open to UK residents 18 years and older.  The winners would have to be at recreational standard, or the value can be put towards a lesson.  Competition closes on the 1st Dec 2015.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This competition is listed on Loquax, Prize Finder and Competition Hunter.

 

Win a Trip of a Lifetime by Geocaching #mwgeotrail

I’m all up for an opportunity to win a FREE trip courtesy of Mountain Warehouse.  I love travelling and my daughter is turning into quite the intrepid traveller.  I have no idea where we would go if we won.  Anyhow, the task was simple really and involved one of our favourite activities Geocaching.  We had the Shaun the Sheep Trackable, and all we had to do was find a cache, take a photo, instagram it and leave the trackable for the next person.  I checked our Geocaching app and there were 3 in close vicinity to our house.  So we got kitted up and headed out.

Kids Waterproof Jacket and Shoes from Mountain Warehouse

Kids Walking Gear Courtesy of Mountain Warehouse

We absolutely love geocaching and hopefully this doesn’t put you off.  Part of the fun is that you are not always successful and it can be challenging.

The first one was only about 8oo meters from our house, we read the notes and it mentioned we would need a long pole to grab the cache so we took an umbrella, we closed in on it quickly with a bit of bush whacking involved, my daughter shouted ‘I found it’ and then proceeded to come out of the bushes with this.

Dangers of Geocaching

As you can imagine, I nearly had a heart attack.  It’s paraphernalia for taking Heroin – needles, swabs and citric acid.  Thankfully it had not been used and the needles were not open.  I rang the non-emergency police number and they had no one to come and collect it and our local police station was shut on the weekend so I couldn’t drop it off.  They gave me very bad advice and suggested I stick it in the closest bin, I did question the safety of the Bin Man.  Anyhow, for future reference pharmacies tend to have places to dispose of needles safely.

If at first you don’t succeed……

Geocaching with Kids St Albans

Anyhow that didn’t put us off so we headed for the next one which was only a few hundred meters away.  We had to climb over the railing on the wooden walk way, we hunted high and low, even crawling under the bridge, we even resorted to reading the notes but no clues, I did then check previous logs and it looks like this one may have gone on a walk about as others were not able to find it either.  We weren’t doing so well today.

Try and try again!

We decided to have one last ditch attempt, there was another one within 500m and our dog needed a walk anyhow so we toddled off along the river.  When we popped out the other side, we knew it wasn’t going to be our lucky day, the site of the geo-cache had been completely dug up and was fenced off so we wouldn’t be able to get to it even if it was still there.

We still have Shaun the Sheep so will try again soon.

 

 

Kids have no idea where food comes from

Too many children grow up thinking vegetables come from the supermarket rather than from the ground’ Alan Titchmarsh

Why it’s important to teach kids gardening

I was doing a bit of research for this post I wanted to write about the fantastic things the Gardening Club is doing at my daughter’s school and became distracted and stunned by how little kids know about where their food comes from.

In 2010, as part of a promotion for his Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver went into a class of First Graders (six-year olds) and presented them with a variety of common vegetables.  He holds up a few tomatoes and asks the kids what they are.  They are all stumped, faces screwed up and then one offers ‘potatoes’.  They thought Cauliflower was Broccoli and that a Beetroot was Celery.  This was truly frightening.

But, Apparently it’s not just American Kids who are oblivious when it comes to food.

‘In 2013, a British survey found that almost a third of the country’s primary school children thought cheese was made from plants and a quarter thought fish fingers came from chicken or pigs.’

‘LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), surveyed 2000 people aged between 16 and 23 years and found a third of them did not know that bacon came from pigs.’

‘Researchers also found that four in 10 young adults did not know where milk came from, with 40 per cent of them failing to recognise the link between milk and a picture of a dairy cow.’

Yikes!

Growing up as a child, my grandmother was an avid gardener, she had the most amazing vegetable garden, she grew absolutely everything herself in meticulously planted raised beds.  She also had a cold cellar where she kept all the produce, what they didn’t eat fresh, she canned.  She made the best Raspberry Jam ever.  We also had our own vegetable gardens over the years and in my 30s I had an allotment so I’m fairly familiar with most vegetables.

However, I can now see why many kids are naïve when it comes to the origins of what’s on their plates and if you asked them they would probably say it comes from the supermarket.  Children only see adults selecting fruit and vegetables from the produce aisle and putting it in the little flimsy plastic bags or having it delivered to their doorsteps, many kids don’t have an opportunity to see or experience the journey (Sowing, Planting and Harvesting)  before the produce reaches the supermarket.

Gardening Ideas for Kids

Alan Titchmarsh believes children should be taught gardening as one of the “basic skills of life” and I agree with him.  We are very lucky at our school and we have a gardening club which is run by a very enthusiastic parent volunteer.  This year they are hoping to enter St Albans District Schools in Bloom Competition.

The kids have been very busy planting everything from potatoes to petunias and are involved in the process from sowing the seeds, to planting in the ground, harvesting the crops and they will also go on to sell some of the produce.

Meet Straw Barry!  Genius!

 Gardening ideas for kids

Anyone for a game of Mini-beast Noughts and Crosses?

Garden games for kids

Who would have thought of planting potatoes in tires.

Ideas for recycling tires

A Greenhouse made from Recycled Bottles courtesy of the Site Manager

 Ideas for recycling soft drink bottles

It’s amazing what a lick of paint can do to a derelict picnic table.  The kids now have a potting table.

 Potting table made from recycled picnic table

My favourite is the Daffodil Welly planters.

Creative Gardening Ideas for Kids

 

We also received a selection of mystery bulbs from Spalding Bulbs.  The kids had a blast trying to work out what they were.  They haven’t come up yet but we will report back once they do.  Hmmm.  I wonder what they will be.  They could be flowers or vegetables.

Thanks to all the hard work from our parent volunteer, I have no doubt that these kids know where fruit and vegetables comes from and if you showed them a potato they could identify it.

Good luck in the competition.

 

 

 

 

7 Recommended iPad apps for 7 year olds

With Summer holidays looming I thought it may be an idea to share a few of our favourite iPad apps.  Finding new apps can be a bit of a minefield.  I’ve lost count of the number of iPad apps we have downloaded and it turns out they were rubbish.

You can’t always trust online reviews but I can assure you that my 7 year old daughter has played with these extensively and goes back to them over and over again. I don’t suggest you dash out and buy them all but do have a look and arm yourself for the holidays.

Chatterpix Kids by Duck Duck Moose

iPad Apps for 7 year olds

I’ve always been a fan of their apps.  I came across this one under my guise as a Computing Consultant in Education.  It has a lot of educational potential but bottom line it’s hilariously good fun.  You can make just about any object, including a piece of toast, talk simply by drawing a straight line and recording your voice.

 

Crazy Gears by 7 Academy

Apps suitable for a 7 year old

Children explore how mechanisms work (gears, chains, rods and pulleys)  and engage in problem solving to unravel a series of puzzles.

 

Thinkrolls2 by Avokiddo

iPad Apps for kids - science

I love apps that are fun and educational at the same time.  Thinkrolls2 is a series of logic problems that get progressively harder, you have to get the characters through a maze, whilst learning about force, aerodynamics, buoyancy, electricity and even get a taste of quantum physics.

 

Simple Machines by Tinybop

Recommended ipad apps for Year 2

Children have the opportunity to explore levers, pulleys, wheels, screws and wedges and learn about physics without even realising it.  This app is a great way to foster a love of Science from a young age.

 

Barefoot Atlas

Geography apps for kids

This app was created for 9-11 year olds but I think it’s brilliant for slightly younger children as well.  You have a 3D Globe that you can spin around with a swipe of a finger, then zoom in to explore different landmarks and places.  Listen to BBC TV presenter Nick Crane and learn some fascinating facts about different countries.

 

Shadow Puppet Edu

I have no idea why they call it Shadow Puppet as it’s a bit misleading.   This is an incredibly powerful app and very easy to use, again I came across it in a school.  I downloaded it and within minutes, without any input from me, my daughter was creating animated books, by taking photos of her favourite book and then narrating them herself.  She then moved onto creating a visual presentation on Egypt using the images that come with the app and narrating them herself.  This could make homework projects much more exciting.

Toca Hair Salon2

Fun apps for 7 year olds

We’ve had this app for awhile and my daughter never tires of it, she can cut, curl and colour hair with hilarious results.

Do you have any must have apps that I should have a look at?  If so, leave me a comment below.