When Helen got in touch on our Facebook Page last week to say she had assembled 22 boxes of our Northcote Storage Furniture we were mighty pleased and very impressed! She even sent in the lovely picture above!
Helen – We hereby crown you the Queen of Northcote Storage – Long may it last you.
Never have the words ‘April Showers’ been mentioned so much at GLTC HQ. What a couple of weeks!
Fortunately BBC Weatherman John explains all!!!
Very useful lately ; our Skip Hop Zoo Towels – £18
Hope you like our Parade cover of our new Catalogue! What a year it’s going to be!
Becky Goddard-Hill blogs at Baby Budgeting and Family Budgeting, focusing on creative ways to raise a family. Prior to parenting Becky was a senior social worker who trained staff in child development, play and identity.
She is now mum to Franklyn and Annalise (aged 7 and 4) and a freelance writer. She is the author of How to Afford Time off with Your Baby (Vermilion 2009) and is currently crafting a whole series of stories about unicorns & rainbows!
Becky has written this piece about the importance of Role Play for our Kids:
Children love to role play. They adore immersing themselves in pretending to be another person and acting out that role. It gives them a sense of power, helps them feel ‘grown up’ and encourages them to imagine what another person may say or do. It also helps their social and emotional skills as they have to try and empathise with another person’s viewpoint, e.g. a frazzled mummy, a busy shopkeeper or a panicky astronaut. Role playing encourages turn taking, and cooperation as well as problem solving and storytelling. It is a fabulous aid to a child’s development.
My son likes to be a teacher at ‘Lego School’ and boss my little daughter around. I think this would be his fantasy job actually! GLTC sell a very sweet play school that would be perfect for role playing school. This 149 piece set includes everything they need to imagine the ultimate pretend classroom such as grades a register, stickers, a clock, a dry-wipe board, maps, a calendar and much more. Children do love to role play as authentically as possible; it helps them really embrace their role. I guess it would be the same for any actor. To facilitate role play the best thing you can do is give your children time.
Imagination often kicks in best when there seems little to do.
My daughter who is 4 loves mostly to role play me. She enjoys organising everyone for school or making tea (I think she enjoys it more than me actually!) This helps her understand what I do and means she controls the menu. There is a lot of cake coming out of her play kitchen! GLTC sell gorgeous toy kitchens and I really like their retro play kitchen. I think it’s’ neutral colours encourage boys to play with it too (very important to avoid gender role division at such a young age.) In my experience you get many years play from a play kitchen and it’s a toy worth investing in.
Super Chef Play Kitchen – £155
We have a trunk full of dressing up clothes which encourage role play too. We have fire-fighters, vets, nurse and police officer outfits for those important ‘real’ role plays. These help the children understand positions in society and who does what. The children use these roles to practice rescuing, helping, arresting (!) and taking care of others. Other outfits such as fairies and wizards are more about ‘pretending and imagining’ and it is good to have a mix.
Not just clothes but props help with role play too. Dollies and prams help children have a go at parenting roles, play food helps stock shops and kitchens, paper money and shopping tills all extend the play experience and help with skill development, I tend to introduce new ‘props’ every so often, sometimes these will be bought and sometimes found lying around. A prop may just be something simple yet educational like a fabric shopping bag, which will give me the chance to talk about recycling. Or it may be something silly like a talking toy parrot. Children will use their creativity to pull these props into their play and it is great fun to see.
What will your kids be today?
Thanks Becky!
The latest from Phoebe and Co!
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote on this very blog about being so, so, so happy with it finally being Spring. Ah, Spring glorious Spring; sunshine, sandcastles and dripping ice-creams. Yay!
Hmm. Didn’t seem to go that well did it? Here I am once more, sat at my laptop, in my well-ventilated (blooming freezing) terrace, wearing 3 tops, jeans and my fluffy welly socks. Spring, it would seem, sprung and then swiftly legged it.
And I’m not instinctively a Peppa Pig. I don’t long to jump in muddy puddles. Not One Bit. On a rainy day, give me a hot chocolate, the paper and the promise of some delicious homemade soup. Puddles? Outdoors? Oooo do I have to? Yes, of course I do, there’s children in this house!
Thankfully my children haven’t inherited my wimp gene and are well up for getting out whatever the weather. In fact, last October we spent 5 days in the New Forest in torrential rain, when I was telling a friend the next week that we’d had awful weather, my daughter said, “Did we?” She’d thought it had been bloody brilliant! Wading through shin-deep puddles, getting drenched on a hack, and having to take towels every-time we went to the play park – what fun!
So during this week of April showers I’m going to aim to see the world through the eyes of my ‘glass half full’ offspring; I’m going to try and hide my disappointment as I don my most unattractive of rain coats instead of the gorgeous summer jacket I’m yet to wear. I’ll put on my wellies (the TOMS can wait!) and I’ll laugh as we get splashed by a car. All this happiness attacking my intrinsic rain-induced-grumpy-persona may have me looking mildly insane, but still I’m sure the kids could see the benefit in that too!
Phoebe blogs about her gang at Tremendously Two – and we love it too!
If you haven’t seen the short film about Caine’s Arcade it’s really worth a watch – and your children will love it too. You can watch it online here.
Enjoy!
This is our cress caterpillar! You can see in the photo that 3 of the segments are a lighter shade of green than the other three. Can you guess why this might be?
What you need:
Instructions:
The cress should grow within a few days. I did give my ‘in the dark seeds’ a little bit of light to help them grow which is why they are slightly green.
The Science Bit
We were very surprised that the seeds grew so well without any soil. They got everything they needed to grow from the water and nutrients stored in the seed.
Green plants make sugar for growth by a process called photosynthesis.
Carbon dioxide + water (and light ) ———> glucose and oxygen
Photosynthesis takes place in choroplast cells which contain a substance called chlorophyll which makes plants green.
Sunlight is also needed to make chlorophyll, this is why the cress seeds which have been exposed to less sunlight are less green than the seeds kept in the sun.
Thanks Science Sparks!
The lovely latest from Phoebe at Tremendously Two:
When I’m writing I try to keep parental-smugness to a minimum – I’m certainly always up for sharing my parenting faux pas (of which there are bucket loads of), much more than I am for disclosing my ‘perfect parenting’ moments (which can be fairly fleeting). But even I have to admit that a little Springtime sunshine does make good parenting easy – or easier at least!
I don’t think it’s merely Vitamin D that the sunshine offers, but Vitamin Happiness, Vitamin Energy and Vitamin Can I be bothered? YES I CAN! Whilst most of the winter I spend my time putting off errands and ventures out – in the sunshine I’ll actually invent items needed to be purchased, “hmmm, running a bit low on tuna – best get some in”, “do we really not have any mustard powder? Let’s walk to the shop, just on the off chance….”
And being more energetic seems to have a perpetuating effect; it’s the most bizarre of phenomena, but the more we spend energy – the more we get in return. On the days when I’ve been to the gym or for a run, you’re much more likely to see me pelting down the road, chasing my kids on scooters later, and in the same way, getting ‘out there’ in the sunshine makes me want to walk more, play more and actually smile more!
So I hope you’re all enjoying this sunshine and poppies vibe of the moment – you know by June we’ll be back in our duffel coats, but at this time of year, just keep the blissful ignorance about the inevitable suspect summer alive!
You can read more about Phoebe’s gang at Tremendously Two
It’s official – Best Children’s Retailer 2012
We’ve won the award for Best Children’s Retailer at the UK’s mail order industry’s prestigious ECMOD Awards – it’s a bit like winning an Oscar in the world of Retail. The judging panel is made up of the great and the good in the industry; they examined our range, our retail operations, and our customer service before deciding that we deserved to win the award this year. To say we’re proud just doesn’t cover it. We’re over the moon!
We’ve won it before of course - in 2001, 2007, 2008 and 2009 - but since then we’ve dramatically improved our customer service, introduced our own designs to over half of our range, and re-vamped our website and our cataolgues to make shopping easier and more pleasurable for our customers. It’s brilliant to have those efforts and improvements recognised by our industry. It also makes us value our wonderful customers and suppliers even more, and we send our thanks to everyone who has shopped with us and everyone who has made wonderful things for us over the past year - we couldnt have done it without you.
But the most important thing about this award is what it teaches us for next year and beyond – namely that we’re getting a lot of things right and that we should keep up the hard work. Here’s hoping for more of the same in 2013!
‘Jamie Reeve, GLTC’s Executive Chairman says ‘We’re so thrilled to have won this award – I’m especially pleased for my team and our suppliers, as they have all put in so much hard work designing and sourcing our range as well as improving our customer care’.
Gin our copy-writer, testing team’s Eliza and her brothers Milo and Luke went the extra mile on Sunday in London to raise money for Sport Relief.
The Team
The Start!
And they’re off!
Enough time for a quick autograph collection…
…and a mighty finish! Well done Gang.
Your can find more here about Sport Relief and how to donate.
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