Archives: March, 2007

Source:Crayola

Recently one of my children was given some Tub Tints for his birthday. Initially, my child discarded the little jar but having tried them out he now insists on having them at every bathtime. Having two kids makes it even more fun because they often mix two or more colours together to see what happens. (The jar only contains red, yellow and blue tints but by mixing you have so many more possibilities).

For an idea of the intensity of the colour you can achieve, have a look at this great flickr photo by samantha

Gareth Greer runs a sports coaching programme for girls and boys aged
between three and nine in Bolton, called Enjoy-a-Ball. He’s very kindly offered to give those of you who have signed up to Little Legends your first three lessons for free. (Gareth’s contact details are here.)

It sounds like a wonderful initiative:

All lessons are taught in a caring, positive, fun-filled environment and there are never more than 10 children in a class. Our objective is to make children’s first experiences in a sports coaching environment happy and memorable.

Following the links from Vicky’s post, I found this open letter to the Telegraph. Its title is “Modern life leads to more depression among children”, and it suggests that the lack of “real” in a child’s life - real play, real food, real interaction - is a prime factor.

A huge number of well-respected people have signed the letter, teachers, child psychologists and the like. And I don’t have the expertise to argue with the notion that children are more depressed (though, I’d love to see the statistics).

The causes of that depression - the lack of “real” in a child’s life brought me up short.

You can now make friends
through Little Legends

We’ve another new little feature to announce. This time it’s “Friends”.

We’ve been able to show you your neighbours (i.e. who’s signed up and lives near you) for a while. This lets research places that various local people think are fun, useful or both. It’s one way of connecting to people in your area.

Not all locals are the same, though. Some will have different aged kids, some will have different tastes, and some will have different values. Quite apart from that, what about people who don’t live near you? Or who have chosen not to reveal where they live?

Source:irmz@flickr

According to this Telegraph article the top ten pleasures of the past that today’s children are missing out on are:

• Board games

• Brownies/Scouts

• Seaside day trips

• Harvest festival and nativity plays

• The school or village fete

• Traditional playground games - conker fighting, hop-scotch

• Sunday school

• The school milk break

• Visiting museums

• Household chores

According to the article:

Parents yearn for a return to the religious and community festivals of old which are now absent from many children’s experiences of growing up.

(ok … and girls!)

The reason I say it is the perfect book for boys, rather than girls, is that they tend to be more interested in:
a) factual books
b) eye gunk, farts, halitosis, snot, lice, maggots, rats and other disgusting things.

The following Mother Goose nursery rhyme springs to mind:

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails
That’s what little boys are made of !”
What are little girls made of?
“Sugar and spice and all things nice
That’s what little girls are made of!”

You can now contact others
on Little Legends

If you’ve registered at Little Legends, you might like to know that you can now send messages to other members.

Our 4 golden guidelines at LittleLegends are: Local, Personal, Community, and Connections. Chatting to Vicky about this over the weekend, although there’s lots more to be done, we’re pretty happy with our progress on the first three. But felt we needed to make it easier for parents to connect to each other, even if just for a little bit of advice.

If your kids are a bit techy or just enjoy playing around on the computer, you will find a great list of free software to download over at Kids Domain

Thanks to Parent Hacks for the tip.

Source:Inside Motherhood

I was amused to come across this post at Inside Motherhood. If you look closely at the picture it says Northampton General Hospital. Has anyone been?

Source:mobiles2go

I have recently been trying to work out at what age you let your children do simple tasks on their own eg walk to the shops or school. Whilst I remember happily doing this from 10 years old or earlier (and collecting my brother on the way home), today there is a culture of fear. Even if I did let my child go out on his own I know I would be scared that something might happen to him.