Why is Izziwizzi Kids built upon 8 imaginative ways to play and learn? Because in establishing Izziwizzi Kids we took time to understand the principles around how children learn through play, in addition to relating to personal experiences bringing up 3 children all aged under 5. In essence, children learn in lots of different ways and it is often difficult at a glance to understand why different types of play are important and how a child benefits from different types of play.
The priniples of the 8 imaginative ways to play and learn in their essence are based on the development of essential life skills and do not change. However, from time to time, educational principles change and are updated. The 8 Imaginative Ways to Play and Learn are…
1. Independence
2. Family Time
3. Educational Toys
4. Creative Corner
5. Let Off Steam
6. Ideas for Grownups
7. Little Helper
8. Free Play
Our aim is to give you the confidence and make life easier in knowing how your child learns and how you can support your child’s play and learning without having to think about it too hard. Our ideal is to give you you more quality time and energy to spend with the children in your life.
A final point on Izziwizzi Kids being adult as well as child focussed. Adults are often forgotten in the whole equation when it comes to toys and are often expected to know and get on with it. Building your confidence, sharing ideas with like minded people we hope will ultimately boost your relationship with the child or children in your life and other adults too.
So please post your comments, suggestions and ideas below. We’d love to hear from you.
Do you make your own play dough? I can remember as a child making play dough with my mum and having hours of fun. But it’s so easy to buy in a tub these days, so why bother? Time is often a major factor especially when both sets of parents work.
But if making play dough isn’t something you’ve done before and you do have half an hour to spare and looking to do an activity together, making play dough is great because…
- Your child learns such a lot and has great fun in the process
- You get to spend quality time chatting
- It gives you both a boost which can often be very welcomed
Here’s what’s brilliant about making play dough…
Children can get involved in weighing out and mixing up the ingredients. They will learn about difficult abstract mathematical ideas in an easy way because they are learning in context using
weights and numbers. They can learn about textures by mixing up the ingredients. They are developing language skills as you talk them through what to do. The feeling of achievement from being involved can help boost self confidence.
And that’s not all …
When getting stuck in and playing with play dough children are free to express themselves creatively and can easily start again if things aren’t quite going to plan. They are developing their fine manipulative skills through kneading and sculpting. They are developing their imaginations as they imagine the end result before they create it.
OK…Do you have a little time to make some? Here’s a recipe
Ingredients
———–
225g/4oz Flour
100g/4oz Salt
30ml/2tbsp cream of tartar
225ml/8 fl oz water
a few drops of food colouring for each dough
Tools:
——
Saucepan
Wooden Spoon
Rolling Pin
Cutters
Method
——
Child to do this bit with help from Grownup…
Weigh out and mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan to form a smooth paste. Leave out the food colouring to start with.
Grownup to do this bit…
Cook in a saucepan slowly over a low heat, stirring occassionally, until the dough comes away from the pan and makes a smooth white ball. Then leave to cool.
Child can do this bit (may need help)…
Split the dough into different mixing dishes and add a few drops of
colouring to each dough.
I really like to make the dough red, yellow and blue. When each dough is mixed, I then split each coloured dough and encourage colour mixing to form new colours. Red and Yellow to make Orange, Blue and Yellow to make Green and Blue and Red to make Purple.
Have you tried this activity? Do you have a different recipe to share? Post your comments below..
Have Fun!
Is living with clutter around children an issue? When I first established Izziwizzi Kids, one of the main inspirations was that all too many toy shops are willing to fill our lives with lots of gadgets and ugly looking toys with lots of little bits to them, but nowhere to put them. The packaging is all to often not much use for storage either.
Does this sound at all familiar to you? When we bought our first house we created a lovely space together making it just as we wanted it. Then we decided after 10 years together it would be nice to start a family. Nature took It’s course and fortunately for us, it wasn’t long after trying that we were expecting our first bundle. We were amazed by the brilliance in design of the nursery decor, furniture through stores such as Mamas and Papas, in addition to the range of very nicely designed push chairs. Everything was very pleasing to the eye.
But why couldn’t the toy shops follow suit? Why were we encouraged to fill our house with ugly looking toys, with very few ideas about how to store them or to keep them organised. Ikea offered a range of plastic storage tubs, but nothing that was a toy box that I would have wanted on display. This was one of my many reasons for creating IzziwizziKids.co.uk, to find out whether other people out there in the world experiencing similar types of problems and sure enough many like you do. Toy storage seems rare, but whenever we see some nice toy boxes etc, we are sure to get them in store. And if toys are too big to go into toy boxes, then it’s important that they are at least nice to look at in your living room, or wherever else they might be. So…when the kids go to bed you still have some level of tranquillity and a space to call yours.
Encouraging your child to be tidy can be hard work, especially if you like me and not the tidiest person in the world yourself.
Here are a few tips picked up from experts that I have found to work:
- Dedicate a specific time/s of the day to tidy up time where the focus is on tidying e.g. create a tidy up time just before dinner;
- For younger toddlers it is easier to make a game out of tidying up, such as find all the red blocks, blue blocks etc.
- Have a toy box or a focal point for your child to put everything in to. Otherwise you could well end up with a large heap in the corner of the room.
- You may like to try a reward system such as a sticker…particularly if tidying up is unprompted, or is not mess they created themselves.
Encouraging children to be tidy is an issue raised by a number of parents that we talk to. What experiences or ideas can you share? Please post your comments.
Make up this shaped jigsaw puzzle and see the digger in action.
Age: 3-6
Pieces: 20
Size: 53×40cm
Material: This product is manufactured from a minimum of 75% recycled board.
This Tinti Bathtime Fun Gift Set – Includes TINTI Colours Crackling Bath Bombs Painting Soap & More. All Tinti products are made from natural ingredients, natural colours and without preservatives. Children will have fun putting the painting soap on themselves and mixing the colours to form new colours. Tinti products do not stain skin or the bath.
Mild herbal extracts and the neutral pH support the natural protective function of children’s tender skin.
Wipe the left over colour from the bath and tiles after the bath time fun.
Avoid contact with textiles.
- With jojoba oil, calendula and panthenol
- No preservatives
- With natural colours
- Leaves no residues on the skin or in the bath
Made in Germany
A quick to play family game. The animals want to show how capable they are at making a tall pyramid! Who will position the penguin on top of the crocodile, the sheep on top of the penguin, the serpent on the sheep and the toucan … A wobbly stacking game.
Age 4+
Players: 2 – 4
Material: Wood sourced from sustainable forests.
Length of Each Game: Approx 15 minutes
A wooden baby toy with various brightly coloured play elements including bell, rings, flower, clown figures. This clutching toy encourages sensory stimulation and development in babies with touch, sight and sound.
Age: from 9 months
Height: approx. 12 cm.
Material: Wood sourced from sustainable forests.
Made in Germany
After picking Alex aged 5 up from school we had an evening filled with challenging behaviour. Tantrums, answering back, rolling eyeballs and shouting at his younger sisters. When I questioned Alex about his challenging behaviour he replied to me…
“Mummy…I can’t help it you see. My bones are good, my arms are good, my legs are good, my skin is good. It’s this brain of mine. It keeps telling my body to do bad things. I never thought I’d say
this but …. I want a new brain. I want to take this one out and
get a new one that tells my body to do good things.”
You can’t beat his logic to remove all personal responsiblity. If I have ever found it hard not to smile when I absoloutly shouldn’t it was now. I’m sure you’ve experienced this too.
When I sent out a survey a few weeks ago, dealing with all this type of behaviour was a consistent challenge for so many parents. So I thought I’d make a blog post to share ideas and experiences. Tell
us about the times you have dealt with challenging behaviour successfully and share with us some of the funny things that have happend to you where you’ve found it hard to resist a smile.
One extra thing that I’d like to share is that we seem to experience spells of challenging behaviour linked to growth spurts. We go through tantrum after tantrum for a few weeks and then Alex has grown out of his trousers. I’ve heard other people experiencing this. Is this something that you have experienced too?
Keeping sane together throughout the absurdity of it all.
Alison
Izziwizzi Kids
Since establishing IzziwizziKids.co.uk, I have been fascinated about how we can make it easy to buy toys and gadgets for children that don’t cost the earth – Literally. My own experience before establishing Izziwizzi Kids was and still is that most toys available in the mainstream shops seem to be mass produced in chemical based materials that often break and are not bio-degradable. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that toys are regarded as impacting on the envrionment significantly enough in the scheme of all the other planet polluting activity that goes on in the world. So why can’t it be easy to buy for our children whilst being responsible for the environment and ensuring the social conditions of those who manufacture the products.
As I set about finding these eco products, there wasn’t much stimulating in the market. Products are often not particuarly educational as the focus is upon the materials and distribution methods. Why can’t we have toys that stimulate our children and are good for the environment? So I set to work by employing external experts to research materials that could be used in an environmentally sustainable way. These are the challenges that we faced…
1. Recycled materials are regarded as unpredictable in nature as (in laymens terms) they are made up of compounds stuck together with adhesive, so they can break which is not ideal for products that are likely to go into children’s mouths.
2. Despite the perception of being good for the environment, often the recycling process itself to process the material to be useable as a recycled material can be just as harmful to the environment.
3. The cost of production using some of the recycled material was way to high. Whilst it offers tremendous commedy value, a beach bucket made out of recycled wellingtons would have retailed at £100. I don’t think we would have sold many buckets.
Our ultimate goal is to continue to invest in research, so that we can confidently give products to our children that are safe and kind to the environment.
In the meantime, Izziwizzi Kids actively searches for products that are made from replinshable wood from sustained forests, sources suppliers who manufacture as locally to the UK as possible, suppliers who have an environmental and social conscience in their production methods and demonstrate quality. The quality of toys is of paramount importance to ensure that toys can be handed down for generations like they used to be, as is safety and conditions of workers.
Alison Boxall
Founder, CEO Izziwizzi Kids Limited.
The children love eating this and they just lap up the praise that comes from the grownups around the table. Children of all ages from 2 years onwards can enjoy making it.
Melon Shapes with Jam Sauce
—————————–
Ingredients:
————
1x Fresh, Ripe and Soft Honey Dew Melon
300g fresh or frozen raspberries
1-2 tbsp Icing Sugar
Tools:
——
2 x Mixing Bowls
Sieve
Colander
Food Blender (or potato masher)
Small Shape Cutters (perfect sized cutters available at
http://www.izziwizzikids.co.uk/products/1221)
Food for Thought
—————-
Children can get involved in counting spoons of icing sugar and cutting out the shapes. Young children can learn abstract concepts in maths by counting out the melon shapes and making sure everyone has the same, or for example adding 2 to a plate. They are naturally developing language skills as you talk them through what to do. They will love the satisfaction from completing a job.
Method
——
Grownup to do this bit…
Peel and slice the melon into rings. Remove all the seeds.
Child
Take a small pastry cutter and cut the melon into shapes. Put the shapes onto individual serving plates.
Child
Wash the raspberries in a colander. Put them in a mixing bowl and add the icing sugar using a sieve.
Grownup
Blend (or mash) the raspberries and icing sugar together.
Child
Take a second mixing bowl and a sieve and put the raspberry sauce into the seive to filter out the pips. Child can use a spoon to stir the sauce in the sieve to encourage the sauce through.
Child
Spoon the mix (in swirls if possible) around the melon on the plates.
Tip…
My children love to eat this starter using an egg cup. They put the raspberry jam sauce in the centre egg holder and put the melon around the dish part on the outerside.
Have Fun!
