The Activity Mummah

We have started our outdoors fun with aplomb these last few days! After our wonderful Slovenian adventure, full of outdoor fun and interactive city museums, we landed back in our Fenland home last Thursday. With the weather going through a particularly sunny spell, it seemed appropriate to get outside and be creatively messy! A while back, I bought a tuff tray. I wasn't sure what to do on it or when we would ever use it. We tried painting and sticker craft, both of which were great fun, but I suspect it might just have found its niche as a mud tray. The boy was amazed. Not only is he allowed to get messy, it's actively encouraged! The tray was already a bit of a lake due to rain from the previous day and I just simply added some mud from the garden. Using the toy gardening tools, we stirred the mud and made some mud pies! Then we could draw in the mud: we made shapes, letters, numbers, squiggles, even a cat! The best thing about it was that we were both doing it to...

Hello there. First of all, if you're reading this blog, thank you! I'm the Activity Mummah, by which I mean that I am a mum who is actively trying to make and create things with my toddler, to show that learning can - and should - be fun as well as educational. A Pinterest princess I am not! We live in a world of tests and exams for our young people. The pressures faced by our educational providers to achieve higher and higher scores inevitably leaves our young people feeling stressed and anxious. Such high pressure on people to perform well at tests at younger and younger ages leads to feelings of inadequacy and negative self-perception. This is not how I believe we should treat the next generation. Learning can - and should - be fun. Learning can - and arguably should - be active. We can go outdoors. We can go to museums. We can run and jump and swim and hike. And we can still learn to count and to read. We can count how many trees are in the forest. We can point out whic...