parenting

5 Things your kids room needs to help them get a good nights sleep

15th November 2017 by Kate Williams | 1 Comment

I like to think that I’m pretty good at getting a good nights sleep. I don’t go to bed too late, I relax beforehand, try not to check things on my phone last thing, but there’s one thing that’s been known to ruin my sleep on way more than one occasion, my kids. I’m a great believer that all kids are different – my first child slept through the night from six weeks while my second? Well health issues and other stuff meant that took two years. Ouch. Over the very long time I’ve had to try and sort out my kids sleep issues there are loads of things I’ve tried and tested and so I’ve some up with 5 things your kids room needs to help them get a good nights sleep, which of course means you finally get a good nights sleep too!

Things your kids room needs to help them get a good nights sleep …

5 Games You Can Play With Your Kids Without Having To Get Up

20th September 2016 by Kate Williams | 6 Comments

I love my kids but….well I think they’ve stolen all my energy. Actually I’m pretty certain they have because they seem to have it in bucketloads while I’m knackered. May be it’s something to do with all those nights (years?) they didn’t sleep? Who knows, either way the issue is that sometimes my kids need to play and have fun and sometimes I just need to sit down and not run around. Maybe it’s been a night without much sleep, maybe it’s because you’re ill, either way having had a few years to get myself sorted I thought I’d share my best games you can play with your kids without having to get up off the sofa – you’ll be pleased to know that a lot of these knacker your kids out too – bonus points right?!

5 Games You Can Play With Your Kids Without Having To Get Up

1 – Musical Statues

I played this for about half an hour at the weekend without having to move and man did I appreciate that! Pop on YouTube and get some tunes on while your kids bounce around – my kids current favourites are Happy by Pharrell Williams, Can’t Stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake and Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

2 – How Does This Animal Move

I made this game up when I was heavily pregnant with my second child and couldn’t cope with running around playing. I doubt I’m the first person to think of it but boy I was glad I did! Sit yourself down somewhere comfy and then get your kids to run around the room how different animals would; show me how a butterfly would fly round the room, how would a dolphin swim round the room? This normally keeps us going for as long as I can think up different animals.

3 – Eye Spy

This classic game is always a winner for us when we go out to coffeeshops and cafes but it’s good for at home too – after all it has to be things you can see not things you are going hunting to find!

4 – Musical Bumps

I make no apology for putting down a game similar to musical statues in the same way that no one apologises for having them both at birthday parties. It turns out that the kids parties you went to in the 1980’s were run by mums who had it all properly planned out (ummm, it was the 80’s for you too right?!). Mums sit still, kids go crazy. Kids are happy, you drink your cup of tea. Win.

5 – Baby is Sleeping

This one is from the happy days when my youngest child didn’t sleep through, also known as the first two years of her life (yes, really two whole years.) You lie on your bed and pretend to be a baby (stick with me on this one). Your kids give you milk and then you go to sleep. Sadly it’s only a game though so they get to do something to wake you up at which point you do big baby cries. I pretty much method acted that bit.

So there you go, those are my five pretty awesome games you can play with your kids while lying down on your sofa. If you have any more please add them in the comments section below so I can try them out!

My Best Tips for Travelling with Kids in the Car

Updated on 7th May 2016 by Kate Williams | Leave a Comment

My kids hate going on road trips. Actually, since my second child was born I’ve actively avoided going anywhere further than an hour away, it was just to stressful, too unpleasant. She wanted to scream and fight her way out of the car and I figured I’d rather stay at home. But then fate (or crazy ideas that I have on a Saturday night) threw a bit of a spanner in the works and suddenly we were forced into making long road trips with the kids. Lots of long road trips with them. See, we decided to sell our place here in Essex and move to the other side of the country to Cornwall, which is great and fun and exciting and oh my days that is one looong journey. So we had to take the kids on a six hour journey to see the place before we moved there. And we have to view properties. And actually move. And then come back from the west coast to the east because all our family still live back here and there’s no flights and the nearest train station is 25 miles away so that isn’t going to work either. So these are my very best tips for travelling with kids in the car, because this is something that I’ve really had to work on and if you have any tips I’d really appreciate it if you could pop them in the comments section below!

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10 Fun Ways to Visually Stimulate Your Baby

1st March 2016 by Kate Williams | Leave a Comment

Babies. Sometimes it feels like they don’t do very much, sometimes it feels like they never stop doing things! The world is an exciting (and sometimes scary) place for babies and as a parent I know that I always wanted to find interesting things for my babies to safely explore. Today I’m sharing some of my favourite ways to visually stimulate your baby along with a really cool tool that helps you see what your baby can see!

10 Ways to visually stimulate your baby

Bubbles: I have yet to ever meet a child that doesn’t love bubbles

Mobiles: many people buy mobiles for their babies cots but you can also make simple ones yourself and hang things like ribbons, pompoms and feathers from them.

Books: you can never have too many books for your kids! Babies love ones with simple black and white pictures or pictures of other babies faces.

Mirrors: sit your baby in front of a mirror and see how they respond to seeing themselves in it.

Make a colourful sensory bin: Sensory bins can often be full of things like rice or pasta but they don’t need to be, this rainbow themed sensory bin contains loads of bright colours to visually stimulate your baby, takes a minute to set up and is totally safe for them to play with

Make a tag blanket: tag blankets are great for babies to play with, but by making your own following a tutorial like this you can use bold materials that will visually interest your child too.

Play peek-a-boo

Create a sensory bottle: when my youngest was a baby she loved looking at this sensory bottle, just make sure that the lid is safely glued to before giving it to your baby to explore

Make a family book: Put together pictures of people in your family that your baby can play with and look at

Take them to a pet shop with an aquarium: this is such a cheap way to keep babies entertained, mine used to love watching the fish!

What can your baby see?

Vision Express have launched a fun new online tool which helps you see what your baby can see. Designed by their leading opticians the baby sight tool shows how normal eye sight develops over the first year. You can try out the baby site tool here, all you need to do is input your child’s age and the tool will give you some idea of what your baby’s field of vision, depth perception and colour awareness might be like. As you move the slider, you’ll notice colours and objects become sharper. For instance a newborn will see only black and white while a two-month old will see only bright primary shades. I found it really interesting to play with too as there’s such a difference from month to month! What can your baby see right now?

Baby and mobile image and baby on a mat image via Shutterstock

Post in association with Vision Express

Healthy Disney Inspired Food for Kids

2nd February 2016 by Kate Williams | 2 Comments

Are your kids healthy eaters? Mine are better than they used to be (woohoo!) but they’re still not as big fans of healthy food as I’d like them to be (boo!). I was challenged by Disney and BritMums to come up with some fun Disney inspired food to get my kids to eat a healthy breakfast and a vegetable snack so we took inspiration from their favourite Disney films, Frozen and The Lion King to make some food that I thought they’d try out! You can watch the video below to see how well it went and check out my instructions for these fun ideas in the post below!

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parenting

5 Games You Can Play With Your Kids Without Having To Get Up

10 Ways to visually stimulate your baby

What can your baby see?

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