Diary of a First Child

I have a longstanding love for Disney’s Cinderella. As the oldest child in a family with working parents, I always had more responsibilities and chores than my siblings, and at a young age, my granny started calling me Cinderella, and well, I’ve never slept in the cinders next to the fire (unless you count camping under the stars!) or had two ugly step-sisters take over my home (though I do have two daughters, and now I mention it, it rarely looks like my home anymore!) When I was asked if the girls would like to review the Ravensburger Cinderella Puzzle, I said YES! But actually, I was lying. I had no intention of sharing it with them. Personally, I think the Cinderella Carriage looks gorgeous on my windowsill!

Cinderella Puzzle

Make A ‘Not Back To School’ Tote With Pencil Holder And Notebooks {BostikBloggers}

Home / Bostik Bloggers / Make A ‘Not Back To School’ Tote With Pencil Holder And Notebooks {BostikBloggers}

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017 by Luschka

The theme for this month’s #BostikBloggers is Back to School, which is obviously a bit problematic for us, so we decided to do a Not Back To School craft instead. For this month’s #BostikBloggers we’ve made a Tote Bag with a playful ‘Not Back To School’ checklist, decorated two notebooks and made a pencil holder to sit on our desk. We’ve also made an on-the-go pencil case for when we’re out and about, but I’ll pop that in a different post.

I’m actually really pleased with how this month’s craft worked out, not least because it’s something we’ll actually be able to use over the next few weeks. Not back to school

Why A Career in Public Relations Is a Great Choice for Women

Home / Misc / Why A Career in Public Relations Is a Great Choice for Women

August 17, 2017 by Luschka

While living in the developed Western World, sometimes referred to as the global North, has improved significantly in terms of gender equality since the end of the Second World War, there is clearly still some way to go. For example, there is still a clear gender preference for many jobs. There are more men than women working in construction and engineering, for example, while the fields of teaching and nursing favor female applicants.

The debate over whether there are certain professions to which women or men might be inherently better suited is one that has been raging for some time and has been at the front of public consciousness recently, thanks to a controversial memo penned by an employee at Google. It seems, though, that the majority of us are in agreement that a person’s gender should not dictate the opportunities that are afforded to them. The rise in the number of women training for and working in STEM (science, engineering, technology and math) subjects, for example, is encouraging.

Public relations is one of the fields that have traditionally favored women, who comprise almost two-thirds of the profession. More importantly, women make up the majority of management level PR jobs; 59% in fact. This is significant because, generally, regardless of profession, the highest salaried positions are given over to men.

Managing Expectation With The Usually Fearless Child

Home / Letters to Ameli / Managing Expectation With The Usually Fearless Child

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 by Luschka

I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I sometimes look at my children and am surprised by how incredibly small they actually still are. Because at any given moment, they are at the biggest they’ve ever been, and they’ll never be that small again, it’s easy to forget that on a whole, they’re still actually very small. Especially when it comes to Ameli, my 7 year old. Sorry, my 7 and 3/4 year old. An important point whenever she’s asked. Ameli is an incredibly fearless child. She could run at 9 months, before her brain could register danger, and she’s never stopped. By 2 she’d been to 20 countries, because she made it all so easy. She was fearless. She still is.

Spiders And Spouts Mini Games From Orchard Toys

Home / Good Stuff / Spiders And Spouts Mini Games From Orchard Toys

August 15, 2017August 16, 2017 by Luschka

If you’re going off on holiday and need to stock up on some new games for the journey, the Spiders and Spouts mini game set from Orchard Toys is one to add to your travel bag.

One of a selection of mini games from Orchard Toys – there’s Crocodile Snap, Build a Beetle, Little Bus Lotto, Penguin Pairs and Dinosaur Dominoes, Animal Match, Animal Families, Little Bug Bingo, Llamas in Pyjamas, and more – Spiders and Spouts is a take on the classic Snakes and Ladders, but in travel size.

It’s Time For A Wild Flower Hunt!

Home / 5-6 years / It’s Time For A Wild Flower Hunt!

August 14, 2017August 13, 2017 by Luschka

Did you know that 70% of people surveyed in a recent YouGov Poll ¹ said they would love to know more about local wildflowers? But more and more – or is that less and less – people are losing the connection with nature, and with it their knowledge of things like flowers. Great British Wildflower Hunt

https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/about-us/news/plantlife-launches-the-great-british-wild-flower-hunt ↩

6 Days Only: The Parenting Super Bundle 2017

Home / Products / 6 Days Only: The Parenting Super Bundle 2017

August 9, 2017 by Luschka

Do you ever feel like you just need a ‘top up’ of parenting know how? Just a little inspiration? Well, here’s an entirely library full for you! The Parenting Super bundle has 35 eBooks, 10 eCourses, 2 audios, 23 printables, 9 workbooks, and 1 membership site, plus 2 physical + 2 digital bonuses. Bought individually the total cost of the items in this bundle are $1283.96/ £987.24/ AU$1628.19 but it is selling for $29.97/£23.04/AU$38.

During the first two days (Wed. & Thurs.) customers will receive a free eReader upgrade that includes the mobi & epub versions of all ebooks formatted for eReaders. After that, the upgrade will be $10.

Customers will have the chance to add the Conquer Your Clutter Super Bundle for $27 after checkout.

Here’s a look at some of the 1600 printable pages from this bundle:

Character Options Easy Braids {Review}

Home / Products / Character Options Easy Braids {Review}

August 7, 2017August 13, 2017 by Luschka

My girls love role play. If 20 years from now they’re both actresses, I’d not be in the least bit surprised. They can spend their days lost in play, if I don’t pull them away to do something ‘more constructive’. So when I saw the Character Options Easy Braids machine, I knew it would be one they’d have fun with.

The Easy Braids machine is a plastic jobbie with three funnels through which you thread the hair you want braided, then you press the button and just like that, lovely braided hair.

What’s in the box?

Making A Peter Rabbit Diorama {BostikBloggers}

Home / Creative Development / Making A Peter Rabbit Diorama {BostikBloggers}

August 5, 2017August 6, 2017 by Luschka

We’ve been super busy the last few weeks with lots of activities and things keeping us on the go, so we haven’t had much time for anything educational or even all that much crafty. The last book we read together was a short little one, Peter Rabbit, which I’ve been surprised to realise contained a richness of literary concepts in a short amount of sentences and pages. One of the activities we did around Peter Rabbit, using our #BostikBlogger theme for the month: Nature, was to create a diorama scene from the Peter Rabbit story.

The kids chose a generic “Peter Rabbit frolicking through the fields” image for the diorama, so we set about using the contents of the Bostik box to make our Peter Rabbit Scene.

We made flowers using pipe cleaners and little flower confetti bits.

Traditional Car Games Still Top Choice For Family Holidays

Home / Tots Travel / Traditional Car Games Still Top Choice For Family Holidays

July 31, 2017 by Luschka

In May the children and I drove to Holland for a fantastic week of pretty luxury camping. Coming from the Isle of Wight the trip included 2 ferries, two accidents (others, not ours) and a motorway entirely closed for maintenance, the 8-hour trip took us closer to 14 hours. Fortunately I’m not a first timer to long journeys, so I was well prepared with car games, individual games, charged tablets and phones, extra cables for on-the-road charging and everything you could possibly need, down to the pencil sharpeners. And then, in a stroke of complete lunacy, I left the whole Trunkie filled with car games and rainy day games and activities neatly by the front door and didn’t realise it until we were on open water with no chance of going back to fetch it! Disaster, right? Well, it all turned out okay, in the end, as I managed to draw on a childhood of car travel in a life before travel-sized games and technology to make for fun travel that was more about the waffle-stop in Belgium than about just reaching our destination.

Traditional In-car Games Read more: Traditional Car Games Still Top Choice For Family Holidays