Things to do in the summer holidays

It’s the half term holidays next week, and if you’re anything like me you’re going to be wondering how to keep your little darlings occupied for not much money.

When the holidays roll around again, I inwardly groan as I know they’re going to whine they’re bored about two minutes after the school bell finishing on Friday.

With not much money spare for stuff like soft play or adventure theme parks, I’m going to have to get a bit more creative.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot to keep them quiet. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.

- Take a picnic to your local park

A blanket or a rug to sit on, and some sandwiches and crisps. Then a go on the swings and slides afterwards to burn off all that energy.

- Making daisy chains in the garden

Sometimes the simplest, oldest things are the best. I have fond memories of sitting on the grass as a child and making a necklace out of daisies or dandelions.

Pass the skill on!

- Buy a water gun

They can cost under a tenner. If your kids are anything like mine, they’ll get hours of fun from soaking each other with a sonic blaster type thingy, especially on a hot day.

- have a BBQ

Get them to help and prep the salad. Get them lettuce leaves tossing, or grated cheese sprinkling. They might actually EAT the salad on offer if they’ve had a hand in helping make it!

Put out colourful jugs of squash or fruit juice as well with ice and slices of lemon/orange in.

 

If you’ve any more ideas, share them in the comments box…

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How do you get rid of old toys when you’ve watched all the Toy Story films?!

Spring must finally be on it’s way (yes, I know it’s May, but try telling the weather that) as the sun is out and I’m having a spring clean of the house.

So far this morning, I’ve tidied up the back garden and done a bit of weeding, sorted out the bookcases and put toys away in their bedroom as I was starting to forget there was a carpet under there somewhere.

I’m going to have to have a sort out of of their old toys at some point. We’ve got Ninky Nonks and Noo Noos, and all kinds of stuff they’ve grown out of.

How do you begin to have a sort out though when you’ve watched all the Toy Story films?

Watch this song and listen to the lyrics and THEN tell me you could quite happily get rid of old toys. You’d have no HEART. No heart at all, I tell you.

Wahhh!

They may just have to stay in the toy box for a while yet.

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Old fashioned and traditional children’s birthday party memories

With two small children aged 5 and 9, I’ve had my fair share of  organising children’s birthday parties over the last ten years.

Most parties now seem to be held in soft play areas, but this year we’ve seen a rise in invites to the traditional children’s birthday party at home, which is a welcome change and a hark back to simpler times as birthday parties when little were always about fun instead of big affairs.

As much as I love soft play parties (hey, they do all the hard work for you!) it’s lovely to see a return to the old school fun and games.

A typical party table wasn’t complete without:

- jam sandwiches

- bowls of multi flavoured crisps. It was like a lucky dip. One bite might be cheese and onion, the next prawn cocktail….

- cheese and pineapple on sticks hedgehog. Remember those?!

- Iced gems biscuits

- and cups of brightly coloured squash.

 

Party games were pin the tail on the donkey, pass the parcel, and sleeping lions.

The latter being utter genius on the grown ups part, and one I try to incorporate into parties now if I can. Hyperactive kids high on e-numbers doing your head in? Lie them all down on the floor and get them to pretend to be asleep and stock still.

Bribe them into staying like that by promising a prize to the one who stays still the longest.

As I said, genius.

What are your memories of your birthday parties when you were little?

This post has been added to the weekly blog  nostalgia link up on Save Every Step

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Mobile phones for four year olds – just why?!

At an age where you’re barely taller than your parent’s knee it seems a strange idea to market phones for children as young as the age of four, which is what the makers of ‘”1stfone” are doing.

For the princely sum of £55, you can get a pay as you go, or sign up to a contract to tie yourself to the bugger.

At the age of 4, who the heck would you be wanting to call anyway?!

At that age, you’re not even away from your parents/guardian anyway, so there’s no need to be phoning anyone.

There’s the good old fashioned landline they could use if they needed to ring up while at a sleepover or whatever, rather than frying their tiny brains.

I don’t get the obsession with fancy, expensive gadgets for kids.

What’s wrong with a toy phone, anyway?! A lot cheaper, and they can pretend they’ve got a phone.

Your wallet will thank you, they’ll have their ‘phone’ and the real thing can wait until they’re old enough to appreciate it as well as look after it.

Most 4 years old will drop it down the toilet or leave it on the sofa to be sat on by someone’s bum anyway. (Or maybe that’s just my kids….)

What do you think? Phones for 4 year old’s a stupid idea, or genius?!

 

Phones for 4 year old’s article

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Primary school memories v primary school….. homework?!

I remember a lot of things from primary school, but the one thing I don’t seem to remember is the sheer volume of homework that the 9 year old is bringing home lately.

Why would that be? It might have something to do with the fact that we didn’t actually HAVE any homework in primary school.

That particular pleasure (ahem) was saved up for secondary school in which we got daily homework.

Now I don’t usually moan about homework, I think it’s good they get some as it gets them prepared for high school.

The Easter holidays (that’s two weeks) has seen him bring four maths exam papers home to do over the holidays, and several sheets of A4 of various sums.

You what?!

The poor little sod’s been slaving away most of the holidays, but it has all duly been handed in.

To be given another two exam papers to hand in for next week.

Sheesh. These SAT’s exams they have nowadays in the last year of primary school have a lot to answer for.

I’m sure he’ll have some memories of fun times at school tucked up in his head somewhere as well, though.

My memories of primary school go something like this:

- Having outdoor toilets.

Oh, they were fun to dash across the playground to on a frosty day. Brrr. (Don’t even MENTION that horrible shiny tracing paper type bog roll they used to make us use. Shudder.)

Although we did have fun trying to climb over the doors and dangling upside down from them…

They’re pampered, nowadays though. They have indoor toilets. (Don’t know they’re born.) I remember them being built in the last year or so I was there. We had a lesson where we had to do a time capsule pod thing and then put the time capsule down into the foundations.

So deep under the swanky pants toilets floor, there’ll be a little box full of letters.

One saying something like  “Hello, my name’s Wendy and I love Kylie, Jason and reading books.”

That’ll flummox all those space age type people in a few thousand years time, wondering what or who the heck a Kylie and a Jason is.

- A mad as a box of frogs headteacher

No, she was lovely really. Although when someone did well or whatever and they had to stand up in assembly to be praised, she used to pat us on the head and sing a song about us all eating our shredded wheat or something that morning to make us strong.

*Sings* “Shredded wheat, shredded wheat, pat them on the head….” patting us on the head all the time.

If I remember correctly (I’m old now, it was a long time ago) we used to get the birthday ‘bumps’ too. Can you imagine that nowadays? The teacher’s would be too scared to allow that in case someone sued for their arm falling off or being wrenched out of place.

 - school dinners

Oh, that chocolate crunch school dinner dessert thing with some green chocolate minty sauce stuff over the top. Yummmm.

I think it was sometimes pink as well with a strawberry taste.

Whatever happened to that stuff?!

Naughtiness

setting off the school bell as a dare (well, they would leave it in a daft tempting place such as the corridor wall.) Then having to spend the morning in disgrace outside the head’s office. Oopsie.

(Mother, if you’re reading this, I was good at primary school really… honest… )

So let’s hope the two small people of the household now have more good memories than homework memories.

Maybe not so much of the setting the school bell off type though…. I’ll be having words if so.

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Easter egg competitions at school

We’ve been dusting off our crafting skills (well the kids have – not so much me, ahem) this week and coming up with new ideas for things to make for the annual school character egg competition.

Last year I blogged about the calibre of the entrants and how it was more likely to be a case of the mum’s sweating it out over the glue and paints than the small people.

Yeah, down with all that sort of thing.

Here, it’s a kid effort.

So, with much further ado, here is this year’s creation…..

Ohhhhhhh, the Grand Old Duke Of Yolk,

He had 10,000 chicks

He marched them up to the top of the hill

and he marched them down again.

See all the little chickies marching up the hill to the Grand Old Duke of Yolk at the top.

We toyed with the idea of putting 10,000 chicks on there.

Then realised you’d need a farking great big board to put them all on so that amount you can see would have to do.

Didn’t win 1st, 2nd or 3rd main prize though.

Maybe next year….

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Dressing up for World Book Day… or maybe not

Looking at pictures and tales of children having to dress up as their favourite book character today, it seems I’ve got off lightly with our school as there is to be no funny costumes.

We don’t have to run around panic buying costumes and spending a small fortune on things that are only going to be worn once.

Which is what I would be doing as I don’t ‘do’ sewing.

If I did ‘do’ sewing, I’d end up sewing part of myself to the costume, or the whole thing would fall down in the middle of school assembly or something.

We celebrate World Book Day at our school by having a big book stall instead, where we can buy books.

Now that’s MUCH more up my street.

Any excuse to buy new books is fine by me.

Is your small person dressing up today? If so, what did they go as?

 

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Did Kate say daughter? Did she? Didn’t she?! Oooo…. :-) Or oh…

The Duchess of Cambridge, who is expecting her first child and heir to the throne, has apparently ‘let slip’ that she is expecting a daughter this summer.

Today’s papers and news sites are now feverishly expecting all things pink come July.

All because a lady offered her a teddy on a walkabout the other day and Kate thanked her with ” thank you, I will take that for my d…… for my baby.”

Oh, come on people. Really?!

It’s a well known fact that Kate and William have a dog. They’ve been pictured out and about with it enough times.

My bet is on the fact that she wasn’t about to say daughter. She was automatically going to say ‘dog’ and thought better of it, as she didn’t want the lady bearing the teddy gift to be traumatised at the thought of little Ted being hung upside down by his earholes and being used as a chew toy/ slobbery bed time pal.

When said lady was probably envisaging little Ted becoming ‘Royal Ted’ and having his own little throne in the Royal Nursery.

I wouldn’t be Kate for anything. Poor soul knows she can’t say anything without it getting twisted and analysed by the entire nation, the world (and it’s dog too.)

If I was in in her shoes, I’d be hiding in the Palace with my feet up, chain eating HobNobs as I know every sneeze and syllable would be scrutinized the next morning.

Never mind Royal protocol and all that guff.

I’d be in hiding until everyone got bored of Bump Watch.

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Do we have to like everything that our children like?

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to get my eyes glazing over, it’s somebody mentioning that dreaded ‘F’ word.

Yes, football.

I’ve always, for the life of me, never been able to fathom what’s so blinkin’ fascinating about people booting a ball around a football pitch for hours (and hours) on end.

Grown men in floods of tears when their team doesn’t win. (My baffled look and the words “um, it’s only a game, no-one’s died!”) never seem to be warmly received when I’ve uttered them in the past.

Which is why I’m probably being rewarded with a sense of football karma now I have two boys who are obsessed (and I mean O.B.S.E.S.S.E.D) with football.

If they’re not talking about overhead kicks, man of the matches, dribbling skills (and probably a lot of other terminology, I couldn’t tell you as that’s probably at the point my brain tuned out) then they’re playing it.

They’ve been at their football clubs this morning, playing football solid for a few hours.

Then come straight home, had some lunch and gone straight back out into the garden to play yet more football.

It’s a wonder their legs don’t fall off.

I’m ready to confess I don’t actually go to their football club anymore on a Saturday morning.

I tried.

I tried the whole standing around and cheering them kicking a ball about. It was lovely. To start with. Do you know how long football matches last?! 90 minutes!!

That’s a long time when football is that glazy mind numbing subject thing.

Their dad loves football too. I’ll leave it up to him to stand on the sidelines. They can tell me all about it when they get home.

Me? I’ll stick to things like the Easter Bonnet Parade, and clubs such as Cubs and swimming….

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Re-writing books to be politically correct. Leave them alone!

As a child, I used to love reading and had lots of different books, from Enid Blyton to Roald Dahl.

It’s always the way though, that you end up discarding some much loved books or they get misplaced over the years, so I’ve recently started to re-buy some of the old ones I had as a child.

It’s great to read about the midnight feasts at Malory Towers, with the lashings of ginger beer, and strange concoctions they used to put together such as sardines and peaches and giggle round the moonlit pool while the teachers all snore away in their rooms.

Or go on a magic journey to the top of the Faraway tree, with Silky, MoonFace and the Saucepan Man.

There’d always be a different land at the top of the tree each time they went up. Some nice, some not so nice.

The one thing I have noticed on re-visiting these old books though, is that when buying them, you have to be careful that you are getting one of the original books that haven’t been tampered with over the years and re-written.

Yes – some, in their infinite wisdom and need to be all politically correct, have changed stories around, edited them and changed names.

So instead of  the little girl being called Fanny, she’s now called Frannie.

Dame Slap, who was one of the less desirable characters from one of the Lands at the top of the tree, got her name for slapping children in her care.

In the modern re-prints, she’s known as Dame Snap who just raises her voice and has rather a nasty shout.

I mean, come on.

Why?!

I don’t agree with changing books in order to come over all politically correct and ‘with the times.’ Yes, some aspects of the stories are sexist (Anne from the Famous Five being told that she couldn’t chase adventures as she was a girl, so had to stay home and make tea for them all instead), or nods towards corporal punishment in the form of Dame Slap.

Why should it be changed though? It might have some outdated ideas in there, but that’s the way the world was when they were written.

I don’t want to read sanitized, cleaned up politically correct versions, thank you very much.

I used to read lots of Enid Blyton when small, and I haven’t turned into a racist, sexist corporal punishment lover as a result.

Leave the books alone for future generations, as it’s a peek into past times.

Should we airbrush history?

What do you think?

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