- Archive for April, 2012

        I read three reports last night which all highlighted to me the importance of opportunities before 5 and the having high aspirations for our children.  All three of these articles highlighted for me the shocking lack of social mobility in our country currently. Ahead of the cross party report about social mobility The Guardian ran an article yesterday about how your ...

I am teacher at a secondary special needs school and I am also a mother of a 3 year old girl.  In both these spheres I have seen the value of cooking as a life skill, an educational tool and also just for fun. At school, cooking is taught both as a subject and as a social activity.  We run a ...

        A little while ago for our birthday parties post I asked the ‘party bags’ question.  The subject came up again at our More than a Mum session last Saturday as I mentioned the amazing party bag that my friend had created for very little cash, but with huge entertainment value. (More of that bag later.)  Throughout these conversations the comment ...

Last weekend we had the third and final session of our first More than a Mum course.  It has been a brilliant experience and we have both got a lot out of running the course as well as having lots of fun.  We met a fab group of mums who were all really quite different.  However, one thing united us ...

      Last week, Mucnhkin became a little scientist.  She explored what happens when you float paper flowers in water and the fibres in the paper swell; she created a chemical reaction and a self inflating balloon; and she made a wormery. “All children start out as scientists, full of curiosity and questions about the world around them” Carl Sagan My husband, who is ...

I saw this post on Facebook this week and thought it rang so true I had to post it on MTAM today!  Never a truer word said!!!

 I guess this is a topic we’ve visited quite a lot recently but here’s another angle. A few weeks ago I blogged on the soaring costs of child care but a new study by uSwitch.com, the independent price comparison and switching service, has exposed the amount of debt that parents get in to just by simply planning and then having ...

        Today at More than a Mum, we have another guest post. This post is about languages; bringing up children bilingual and the need (or not) for languages to be taught at school. I'm bilingual. My mother tongue is not really a useful one, other than when communicating with my family back home. But, I am trying to raise ...

         As you probably already know from our about page, I (Ruth) am a country girl in the big smoke and as such I am always encouraging Mums to get the kids outdoors and dirty!  This morning, I saw that the National trust has launched a list and website for kids entitled 50 things to do before you’re 11 ¾ ...

At the moment Bear Cub is obsessed with the word 'Booby'! A few months ago it was 'Poo' and it lasted a good 2/3 months before he got bored with it. Before I had children I was very much of the view that children are nurtured into the gender stereotypes we are all familiar with and that if it was encouraged ...