We seems to be in period where more and more small shops are appearing and thriving, despite gloomy outlooks for the bigger high street stores. At Yummikeys we love to buy and support local. Here are our favourite local bricks and mortar shops - we hope you enjoy them too. We'll be giving you our favourite online businesses very soon too and of course our top experience gifts. Edinburgh Wooden Toys Newly opened and based in the beautiful New Town, this is Edinburgh’s first seller of solely plastic free toys - combining a wonderfully unusual range of toys and gifts, often local, a play area and a even a wooden toys playgroup across the city. Independent Zebra Independent Zebra is a curated marketplace in Stockbridge...
Motherhood second time round comes with a whole load of challenges you perhaps didn’t quite expect. Top of the list is the constant feeling that you are never quite managing to devote your entire attention to anything or anyone. The mum-guilt of neglecting one sibling whilst you tend to the other can be pretty overwhelming to begin with – until you learn to juggle, and then it eases a tiny bit. I took me quite a while to develop my strategies of dividing my time and ensuring one-on-one moments with each child were quality. My answer is Baby Massage. As an International Association of Infant Massage Certified Instructor, Massage in Schools Programme Instructor and mum to three children aged 6,...
Children with a trajectory schema enjoy movement. They like to move themselves and to be moved. They're drawn to watching movement and making movement happen. I recently watched my two grandsons at play. Hamish, 2 years 4 month, was pushing a train around a track. Vincent, 6 months younger, was immediately attracted but appeared to disrupt the activity, repeatedly throwing the trains and pushing them away in random directions out of Hamish's reach, and laughing. Vincent has a trajectory schema. Hamish, who likes an enclosed track made an attempt to join Vincent's play. Throwing a train across the room, at which Vincent laughed his approval, but Hamish then returned to his play - throwing doesn't particularly interest him. This illustrates...
Children with this schema will make elaborate farms with animals in fields, gather objects into boxes and other containers and put outlines and borders round their drawings. The railways track will be constructed as a loop, never just a straight line and the duple bricks will be arranged as a wall around the edge of the board. Children with this dominant schema may enjoy emptying spaces/containers as much as creating and filling them. Play ideas: A good selection of farm animals with plenty of fences and gates. Railway and road tracks that can be made as loop, with vehicles of course. Construction toys like lego/duplo, stickle bricks and wooden blocks for making enclosures. At bath time or in a water...
I'll start with my favourite play schema - transporting. In a busy nursery setting this was the one I dreaded. Transporters like to gather up objects and take them elsewhere, so when a piece of jigsaw is suddenly missing, or another child's shoe (just one!), the transporter may need to be questioned, not that they'll remember because they will have been busy transporting things all morning, quietly creating mayhem. Sometimes they have impressive abilities to hold several unrelated objects in their hands. Their pockets bulge with their stash of bits and bobs. Often the object is of little importance although later on it can have symbolic meaning e.g. a wooden brick may be a loaf of bread (preferably in a...
