Name Writing

As exciting as it is to go out lots we all need to have a bit of time at home too! A while ago the the girls started showing a real interest in letters so this summer I have been trying to teach Emily and Sophie to spell and recognise their names. However, they are only 3 and I want to make sure it is fun so most mornings we have spent 5 minutes playing one of these name games..

1) Pegs- I wrote each letter on a peg and made a name card to fix them on to so they could copy the order of letters. We did it together the first few times but now they can pretty much do it themselves. It is also really good for fine motor skills.. Also, they like saying "pinch pinch pinch" and pretending to be a crab!

2) Cars- I brought these extra cheap toy cars from the party bag section of the supermarket and put a letter on each. Then we play at driving them in to a line to make the name. The girls love to add sound effects as they do it!

So there you are. Quick, simple and educational and much more fun than a pencil and paper on a rainy day.

Exibition Park

I do like a good park and we are pretty spoilt as we have Saltwell Park on our doorstep but recently I rediscovered Exhibition park in Newcastle City Centre and was pleasantly surprised.

Now, until recently I hadn't been to Exhibition park since rollerblading there in the late 90's whilst revising (!) for my GCSEs so when we headed there for a bit of green space after a warm day in town I wasn't sure what to expect.

The main play areas (one for pre schoolers and one for bigger kids) are clean and well maintained with pretty standard pay equipment such as climbing frame, sand pit and swings. The sand pit has some quite funky diggers in it but it took me a while to figure out how they worked! Next to the play area there is a cafe www.cafeinthepark.org.uk which as well as sit in meals and snacks does coffee to take away and has toilet facilities. However what I really loved about our visit were the extra hidden bits!

If you head further in to the park from the play are there is some lovely play equipment that is accessible for wheel chair users but fun for everyone too. My kids especially loved the blocks that you jump on to make a noise. There is also some lovely natural play equipment such as logs arranged so you can balance on them, rocks with holes you can look through and tree stumps to climb and jump on.

The favourite part however what the water tables. There are several fountains and water tables to play on and little flood gates you can lift to make the water wheel turn. This kept my 2 and my friends 2 year old son occupied for ages! Bring a change of clothes though...especially shoes as my friend found out!

There is lots to do for older kids too with a skate park and free tennis courts. We finished off with a walk round the duck pond where the girls were excited to see a baby coot in its nest.  After this we headed to the Great North Museum (another post coming soon) which is very near by so you can easily combine the two.

We parked at Claremont Road pay and display and it was reasonably priced. You could also walk from the Haymarket end of town fairly easily.

All in all, for a breath of fresh air in a busy city it is a fab place to play and let of steam!

Jumparena Gateshead

My girls have always been keen on bouncing since way before they could walk...in fact the music from the blinking jumperoo still haunts my dreams, so I have been keeping a close eye on the various trampoline parks that have been opening up locally with great interest.

We hadn't managed to get to one yet due to a combination of session times, their nursery hours and my work hours so when I saw that the newest addition to the local trampoline scene, Jumpareana Gateshead, had toddler sessions on during the school holidays I jumped (see what I did there!) at the chance to book.

I pre-booked on line which was fairly easy and I was quite impressed with the price too- at £5 per child including accompanying adult it is cheaper than some local softplays. Jumpareana also give you a health and safety waiver to sign at booking- It was rather epic and a bit scary to read but working in a field where I regularly have to risk asses things I can see why they do it!

I managed to find Jumparena quite easily, it is just behind the Metrocentre pretty close to Costco and there was ample free parking outside. On arrival we registered and brought some socks for £2 each This was the only real additional cost and they are yours to keep so we will use them again. My friend who I went with had socks from another trampoline park and that was fine too.  We then watched a brief safety video which did mention danger of death quite a few times but was largely common sense- i.e don't dive head first in to a foam pit.

We then went through in to the main hall which was new, clean and well organised. There were also lockers (£1 refundable) where you could leave valuables. It consisted of several areas, a huge area of small trampoline beds joined together, an obstacle course, an area with balls and baskets and a trampoline floor, a gladiator style beam, and a trampoline that you could leap from on to a huge air pillow. Well the girls and their friend were in their element. They absolutely loved bouncing up and down and running from trampoline to to trampoline. They even loved the air pillow bit which surprised me as they tend to be quite cautious.  It all seemed very safe and the marshals who were scattered around seemed capable and friendly. You have to be under 5 to go to the toddler sessions so there were no big kids leaping around either!

As an extra bonus, this week at Jumparena super heroes are visiting daily so Spiderman made a visit to our session bouncing around and playing with the kids! Now Emily loves Spiderman but is normally utterly petrified of people dressed up as characters and even she braved giving him a high five after an initial few minutes of awestruck shyness so I think it was a nice touch.

There is a cafe on site where we went for a drink and a snack afterwards and watched the bigger children in the next session. There wasn't a huge amount of choice but it was clean, reasonably priced and did coffee, cake and kids smoothies so we were happy. I have to say that having watched the next session which was an open jump I'm very glad we went to the toddler one as it was somewhat higher octane but it still looked like great fun for bigger kids.

I apologise for my lack of photos on this post. This was due to the practicalities of jumping without losing my phone! There are lots of brilliant non blurry pictures on the Jumparena website.

I think it is fair to say that we had a fab morning at Jumparena and will definitely be visiting again!
http://www.jumparena.co.uk/