Bytesize Box – UK Subscription Box Launching August 25th!

Bytesize Box is being launched August 25th in the UK. I discovered Bytesize Box recently and found it completely different to any other subscription box we’ve heard of so far. I am always on the lookout for new and exciting subscription boxes for the girls to try and I’m certain they will absolutely love Bytesize box!

Bytesize Box – What is it?

Bytesize box is a monthly subscription box of practical electronics you and your child can build together. The idea is to encourage children to learn about the environment, sustainability and recycling through electronic projects.

Bytesize box introduces recycling to children in a fun way based on their core values, sustainability, fun and learning! Recycling is something we should all encourage our children to do but it can be tough. Bytesize box encourages children to play and learn as they recycle making it much more interesting and fun for children.

Bytesize Box – What’s inside?

Each month you will receive a Bytesize Box containing 1 or 2 experiments revolving around the theme for the month. Each experiment requires something to be recycled to finish them off such as a plastic bottle, cardboard box or both! Every experiment will turn into something fantastic for you and your child to play with! Bytesize Boxes include full instructions on their website alongside videos to help build the experiments. Most experiments use a small computer which can be customised further by adding more components, changing the code or even rebuilding it into something else entirely!

Subscribe to the email list

Bytesize Box are currently building an email list of people interested. I’ve signed up myself as I know both girls would absolutely love Bytesize Box. The free recycling and activity pack in the welcome email are fantastic. It costs nothing to sign up and well worth doing for the fun activity pack which shows you 3 fun ways to recycle bottles! You can sign up here for free and get your free download straight away!

Trying A Box

Bytesize box will be launching August 25th and all customers who try a box will be entered into a prize draw to win a 3D Printer! The cut off to order your first box is August 31st. Bytesize Box costs just £19.99 with free P&P!

Eva’s Thoughts

Subscription boxes like these are great but I do like to find out what Eva thinks of them. Who knows better than a child when it comes to children’s subscription boxes? Eva’s first reaction was ‘WOAH! That is SO cool!’. She wanted to do the activities right away! Unfortunately we need to finish off our milks first so we will be doing one of the activities this weekend! Keep an eye out on my Instagram to see what we make!

Do you think Bytesize box is a fantastic idea too? Is it something your kids would love?

Cbeebies Magazine – Learning & Colouring Fun Together 

Cbeebies magazineIzzy loves Cbeebies and was ecstatic to receive a copy of the magazine for us to take a look at together. We received the big colouring pack edition which was an added bonus for Izzy as she absolutely loves colouring!

She was really excited about having her own special crayons, pens & felt tips and couldn’t wait to get them off and open the magazine. Of course she was more than happy to pose and show off her magazine first.

Izzy concentrating

 

 

Izzy flicked through the pages and was so happy to see almost every page had something to colour in! She went back to the first page to colour Bing a present.

Bing is her FAVOURITE character on Cbeebies and she loves flop too so she tried so hard to stay in the lines.. Not too bad for a 2 year old! We were both really pleased with her efforts and there was plenty of praise for her.

 

 

Concentrating

 

Of course we then had to colour in the big Bing picture too. Izzy decided Mummy had to join in aswell.. Although as always she had to be a little bit awkward so this time she was wayyyy over the lines but we had fun. Check us out concentrating really hard on our colouring!

 

Bing

Gingerbread Man

 

Next we moved on to some of the activities like this Topsy and Tim one. Although she can’t quite write yet Iread Izzy the questions. She was really pleased to get them right and add the relevant stickers too.

The activities throughout the magazine were really fun and even at Izzy’s age the activities are doable with a little extra help. This magazine is brilliant for improving fine motor skills with colouring and sticking amongst other things.

 

There’s a brilliant Peter Rabbit workbook in the middle which Izzy decided to colour in but would have been great for a slightly older child. I do enjoy buying magazines Izzy will actually enjoy with lots of activities too so I’ll definitely buy it in future for her. Izzy absolutely loved The Furchester Hotel activity though. Finding Isabel and decorating the Christmas tree with stickers. It’s always lovely to see a toddler having fun and concentrating at the same time!

The Furchester Hotel

The Cbeebies magazine gave me and Izzy something to sit down and do together during a very hectic month. I have to say it’s been a great distraction for both of us. Magazines are usually a rare treat as generally they don’t have much in them. The girls are usually bored in minutes in all honesty. However Izzy has spent a few days colouring in some more and getting Eva to read the stories to her. I’ll be buying the next issue for to keep us busy on days Eva is at school.

You can buy a Cbeebies Magazine too in your local newsagents & supermarkets.

*I received this item in return for my honest review.

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!