Linking up with #MySundayPhoto again with this picture I took this morning of the girls haha! I love how innocent Izzy looks as she covers Eva’s mouth to keep her quiet! 🙊😂
Tag: children
Spreading The Joy Of Reading This Christmas
I have always loved to read and reading was my favourite thing to do as a child so I love the idea of spreading the joy of reading this Christmas by giving 3 amazing Penguin Random House Children’s Books (teamed up with Britmums) I received to Izzy as Christmas presents.
Izzy is really enjoying reading books with all of us and as we did with Eva, we intend to encourage her love of reading. We sometimes go to baby rhyme time at the local library and always come back with a stack of books which we read over and over at home. The girls have an ever growing book shelf too & these books will make a lovely addition!
Max & Bird
Max & bird looks like quite a funny book about a kitty who wants to be friends with Bird. He also wants to chase and him as a tasty snack . But that’s not what friendship is all about… is it? I can’t wait to read this to Izzy, I know she will love the illustrations as she loves cats!
The Little Elephant Who Wants To Fall Asleep
The Little Elephant who want to fall asleep is a the latest book from the author of The Rabbit who wants to fall asleep which is a global best seller! It’s aimed at helping children fall asleep. Following Ellen the elephant on a journey through a magical forest that leads to sleep! This sounds like a brilliant book and I’ll definitely be trying it out on those nights the girls just can’t sleep.
The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas
I can’t wait to read the dinosaur that pooped Christmas! We’ve read the dinosaur that pooped the world which the girls absolutely loved. This time Danny’s new dinosaur eats Christmas!! I wonder what happens next!?
They all sound like brilliant books, I can’t wait to read them to Izzy!
I loved books growing up and The Secret Garden was always my favourite as a young child! I have saved a copy for the girls to read. Hopefully one day it becomes a favourite for them, getting lost in the beautiful secret garden and storyline.
What was your favourite book as a child? Do you read it or plan to read it to your child/ren?
Are you giving books as gifts this year? Which ones?
*I’ve been sent these books by Britmums and Penguin Random House as part of their children’s books Christmas present challenge.
Mobicip Safeguarding Children Online
Mobicip is an amazing way of safeguarding children on-line and filtering the content they see with parental controls for Phones, Tablets & Computers. Let’s face it most kid’s these days either have access to a Computer/Laptop/Tablet or Smart phone and my girls are no different.
I was offered a chance to try Mobicip premium for a year in exchange for an honest review and so far I absolutely love it! Premium protects 5 devices and so far I’ve used it on two. Eva has had a tablet since she was 3 as a Christmas present and she still has the same one 3 year’s later which Izzy also uses. They fight occasionally so Izzy has asked Santa to bring her a Tablet this year (a white one with a red book (case) if you were wondering!).
Trying it out..
I signed up and downloaded the Mobicip Monitoring App for parents. Then I downloaded the Mobicip Safety Browser on to the girls tablets. The Monitoring app allows you to view the devices and name them to make it easier to see which device is which. Filters can be set as Mature, Moderate, Strict or Monitor. You can monitor which apps are downloaded and the prices & ratings of each app. Without touching the devices you can view the browsing history too. Kids can also request to view certain sites too which you can accept or not.
With both of them having separate tablets it would be difficult to constantly keep an eye on what they are doing. Knowing how safe and age appropriate the content they are accessing is extremely important to me and many other parents. You can’t watch them constantly so Mobicip helps filter what they access. You can edit filters to block specific content too.
Another feature I really quite like is being able to block internet access at certain times. Say Eva is supposed to be getting dressed but tries sneakily watching a youtube video first, I can make sure she can’t! There is the option to white list and blacklist specific sites, block IP addresses and more!
You can download Mobicip on:
There’s a basic plan or you can upgrade to premium. You can also change your plan at any time!
Mobicip Is great for families, businesses and schools too. The Enterprise package protects over 20 devices depending on the need!
What do you think? Would you use an app like this to help monitor your children internet access?
Replanting Eva’s Weekend Box rain forest
Eva’s rain forest she planted from her first Weekend box grew quite well although only 2 seeds cracked (admittedly Eva did bury the other’s quite far down!) and Eva decided she wanted to split them and pot them up.
The Mr bought a 10ltr block of coco potting soil from one of the pound shops since the plants were already planted in coco and let both girls help.
Eva read the instructions on the soil and the Mr helped them soak it in the bag it came in after they had a feel of the dry block of coco soil. The girls were really impressed by just how much the small block had grown after adding water!
Both girls had a feel of the soil again once it was wet and then helped break it all up to put into the pots. Izzy seemed to know what she was doing and started filling her pot up with soil whilst they were still breaking it up haha!
The girls really enjoyed re-potting the plants and can’t wait to see how big they grow now!
Are you growing a mini rain forest too? If so how did your’s get on? If not then dont forget to visit our original weekend box post and find my promo code to get yourself one free too!
School Issue’s
Eva is now in year 1 and up until she began this year we were fairly happy with how her schooling was going. She had a very lovely teacher who you can tell genuinely loves her job and working with children to get them ready for the following year. Any problems we had were sorted via her teacher and the year ran pretty smoothly.
This year however from day 1 we have had constant problems. Eva absolutely loved nursery and reception, she could not wait to get up and ready each morning to go and learn something new and play with friends. That changed quite quickly after her first week in year 1 she started getting upset getting ready in the mornings and tried to come up with excuses to not go in, obviously we realised something had changed and at first thought it was just the pressure of moving up and doing some serious work so we sat her down and some really long chats about school and any worries she had.
It turned out there was a whole group of boys in her class making fun of her and scaring her every chance they got and from what she had told us she was ignored by teachers several times when she tried to get them to stop. We told her teacher what was happening and asked her to keep an eye on Eva and the boys to make sure it stopped. A few days went by and Eva was happily going into school again but then the following week she came out of school crying, the boys had been jumping out and shouting in her face again.
I was struggling to leave the house at the time so the Mr went to the school and asked for a meeting to be arranged so we could get these issues resolved. We were both bullied as kids and are well aware the impact it has on a young child. Unfortunately during this meeting the staff decided to turn things around on us and tried to say we had a problem with the boys due to their race. Up until this point we were actually unaware of who the boys were but Eva had pointed them out in the playground and we relayed this on to the headteacher. To be honest I was quite offended when I found out as we both come from families with a range of backgrounds, My great grandfather on my fathers side was Maori, My mother’s father was greek, we both have a lot of scottish across both families etc and neither of us are bothered if your black,white, green or blue! We have friends of all races & nationalities, It simply doesn’t come into it at all. We asked for the situation to be monitored regardless and it did calm down for a little while but has since started up again but again we are being ignored.
Eva’s homework and reading books stopped being checked after the 3rd week of school which we brought up with the teachers as we dont see how they can monitor her progress if they dont know wether or not her homework has been done. As I mentioned before homework is something we do take seriously and expect it to be checked regularly by her teachers just as we are expected to help Eva with her homework and make sure it is in on time. Even after bringing it up with the school her books still go unchecked and sit in her bag week in week out so over the last two week’s I haven’t sent them in as I dont see the point if they aren’t being checked plus I wanted to see if the teacher would notice and say something.. surprise surprise nothing has been mentioned!
To add to it all Eva being born a preemie falls ill quite regularly with coughs and colds and the odd chest infection, she has always been a strong little thing though and usually copes and recovers well so we tend to try and get her into school unless she is really unwell and tell her to let a teacher know if it get’s too bad and at worst we can pick her up again. Obviously she has days off if she is really bad, some of you may know both girls got chicken pox and were quite ill with high temperatures so we kept her off for a few days after calling the office and being told to keep her home until the spots had scabbed up. We continued calling in each morning and leaving a voicemail on the absence line to let the school know she wouldn’t be attending that day and update them on how she was doing. No one called us back at any point but we recieved a letter about her attendance dropping and made to feel like we were in the wrong for not sending her in to infect the whole class.
This week Eva has had conjunctivitis and bad headaches and seeing floating dots, we worked this out after several accidents with her chasing these dots and hurting herself. So we kept her off whilst trying to get into the Dr’s to try and work out the cause, by the third day i managed to get her booked in for the following monday and took Eva for a quick eye test to make sure it wasn’t a vision problem. The school was notified every morning of what was going on and Thursday we sent her in as she seemed a little better. They were asked to keep an eye on her as although the conjunctivitis seemed to be clearing up the headaches are really bothering her.
So when she came home and I found out she’d told the teacher’s several times she had a bad headache she was told to just get on with her work I was fuming, to top it all her eyes were gunked up again and were really sore. I saw for myself on sports day just how much the teachers ignore what the children say to them, there were kids begging to go to the toilet jumping up and down trying to hold it in being told to just wait until the events were over.. halfway round when they were being given a cup of juice after each event so I believe what Eva has said and as her conjunctivitis has now worsened again I have had to let her have yet another day off school as she can barely open her eyes!
All of these things have been adding up over the last few months and we now feel as though any problem we take up with the school just gets ignored and brushed over instead of being dealt with and resolved fairly. When I send my daughter to school I expect her to be well looked after, I expect any problems she has to be dealt with properly, I expect them to listen to my child when she is in pain, being bullied or just need’s a little help. We are now at a point where we are seriously considering pulling Eva from this school and moving her elsewhere because it is affecting her so much. She is nowhere near as happy as she was to go to school, she plays up when she comes home and then eventually breaks down into tear’s and tells me what’s gone wrong that day to put her in a bad mood and I cant just sit back and watch it carry on any longer and see Eva and her education suffer because of it.
Has anyone else had a similar experience with their child’s school? If so I would really like to hear other parents experiences and hear how you dealt with it etc. I also would like honest opinions, am I being over the top? Am I expecting too much of the school? What can I do to possibly make things better for Eva overall? I would love to get some feedback!
Our Weekend Box Fun
We were lucky enough to have the chance to review a brand new mini Weekend box this weekend. These mini weekend boxes contain 2 full themed activities and all the bits you need to complete them.
A weekend box is an awesome little box of crafts to do with your child over the weekend that arrives via 2nd class (Posted on a tuesday) which we recieved on friday morning. Each box is themed and we recieved the rainforest theme.
We love crafts and Eva was really impressed when I showed her what had arrived for her.
Eva loved the colourful box and found it funny that it matched her special My little pony rainbox dress haha! I thought it looked really fun and loved how excited Eva was over it.
We couldn’t wait to open it up and see what was inside to keep us entertained over the weekend.
Eva really enjoyed reading about each of the character’s and seeing which characters were on the packets which she thought was really cool. We decided to spread everything out on the table and see what this weekend box was really about.
There were 2 activity packs as promised along with any card needed, some collectable cards and even some vouchers to hand out to our friends for a free box!
The 2 activities stated they were of medium difficulty and would take 40 minutes to complete. Awesome naptime activities for me and Eva to do across the weekend. One activity wasto make a parrot mask and the other to grow a rainforest!
Inside the box itself there is also a certificate for the child to colour in and write their name on and keep too!
Eva couldn’t wait to get stuck in and decided to do the mask first. I helped her cut out the mask and attatch the beak using the glue supplied then Eva got busy following the instructions making ‘feathers’, ‘gems’ and then decorating it with the crayons.
Eva spent hours flapping around the flat wearing her mask so I know she really enjoyed it and having everythting we need to hand was really helpful.
Grow a rainforest was up next. I cut a bottle in half and Eva peeled the pellets that were supplies and we soaked them in water in the bottom half of the bottle.
We then had to make a hole in the bottle lid and thread the string through the lid then screwed it back on the bottle. We then had to transfer the soil into the lid half of the bottle, Eva sprinkled in the seeds and we popped the lid half into the bottom of the bottle which we had also filled with water making sure the string dipped into the water.
We completed both tasks a little quicker than 40 minutes but it was really fun doing the activities. Eva really seemed to be enjoying herself and it was so nice to just pull out the box and get going with an activity. We have a ton of craft stuff but it can sometimes be difficult to find everything we need (mummy’s poor organizing!) so I can really see the appeal of these boxes!
When I asked Eva her opinion on the activities she said ‘It was all fun, I liked making the rainforest because it was messy and I liked making the parrot mask because it was fun making it colourful and drawing rainbow’s on it’.
Mini weekend boxes usually cost £4.95 however we recieved ours free in exchange for an honest review. If you’d like to try one yourself for free then use the promo code EMBER298 when you sign up at https://www.weekendboxclub.com Please Note Future boxes will be £4.95 for Mini Box and £7.50 for a Bumper box, but you can pause or cancel your boxes if you’re not completely satisfied at any time.
Strange words from the 5 Year Olds mouth
Kids always come out with weird stuff dont they? Or is that just my daughter? Over the last few months she has been coming out with some rather odd stuff..
Admittedly having the parents she has
- Can I get a my little pony? Then cut its eyes out and chop its hair off, pull out the stuffing and colour it in and make a zombie pony?
- Mum can I have some dead squirrels? So I can draw with them and make things out of them?
- I’m going to buy vanish gold for my birthday. So I can throw it in your face and video it and put it on youtube. That would be so funny!
- (Latest one! April) Mummy so & so has a willy, he told me! Daddy doesn’t though…