Mess Free Pumpkin Decorating Ideas for Halloween.

It’s October which means pumpkins and pumpkin patch photos have flooded onto social media. Shops are full of pumpkin carving kits, halloween decorations and costumes. It’s a fun time of year. However, for children with sensory issues…or who simply don’t like messy activities it can be full of pressure too. Carving a pumpkin is fun…

Is my child autistic? The signs I saw that led me to getting my son assessed…

One of the most common search questions which lead people to my blog is ‘is my child autistic?’. I myself had typed the same thing into google many times back when J was 1 years old…more so towards 18 months old. Looking back, especially now I have Baby F to compare to, there were actually…

Kids Activities: Things to do with conkers

It’s now October and the horse chestnut trees have started to drop the conkers for us to collect and enjoy. ‘Conker picking’ has always been a sort of annual event for us. We’ve taken J to the same three trees ever since he was old enough to walk. This year there was a huge abundance…

Days out: Newmarket Memorial Park

As we’ve had such lovely weather we decided to go and try out the Memorial Park Gardens in Newmarket, Suffolk. There’s nearby parking, close to town centre and an onsite refreshment shack. We took our 4 year old (who is autistic) and are 3 month old for the afternoon. We started off exploring the park….

Exploring Tumble Tots: A Structured Physical Play Group (inc. Autism advice)

Tumble Tots is a physical development programme for children in the early years (0-5 years). It’s basically a preschool child friendly gymnastics session where children learn to use equipment, do music and movements and develop skills such as hand-eye coordination, arm strength and gross motor control. It’s an important area of development at physical skills…

Activities to Play with Gelli Baff and Gelli Slime (which don’t involve using the bath).

AD| Gelli Baff and Gelli Slime gifted for review. I am a huge fan of hands on sensory play. It can help children to build tolerance to different textures, brings in lots of new language and encourages children to extend their play skills. My son, J (aged 4) is not a fan of messy and…

Our Favourite Easter and Spring Activities for Kids…

Spring time is one of my favourite times of year. We have the return of sunshine, baby animals being born and colour returning to the garden. For children the best part of spring is usually opportunity to be back outside more, and the joy of Easter chocolate. It’s an exciting time for some fun activities…

Encouraging play skills through book themed activities

We are definitely a book family in this household. Between myself, J and my husband our house has a lot of books in every room. J has a ‘book nook’ upstairs and a book shelf downstairs, as well as books in his bag and the car! He reads everything from rhyming books to classic kids…

A Visit to the Moon…exploring space with under 5’s.

J has a fascination with space thanks to his love of Star Wars. It started as just an interest in the Star Wars planets but it then began to bring in our own universe too. He started to want to know about Earth, the moon, our planets etc. We’ve been spending time exploring our world…

Using a sensory tent to support better sleep…

J has never been a great sleeper. He never slept through as a baby, or a toddler or a preschooler. However we had a routine and bedroom environment going that was minimizing issues. Although J would wake ups he had visuals that reminded him not to get up and to go back to sleep or…

Autism: Surviving a visit to Santa

Today was a day that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. We went to see Father Christmas…something I didn’t think would happen. The last time J saw Santa was when he was 1, and he cried his eyes out. When he was 2 he wouldn’t go anywhere near a grotto, when he was…

How it feels to be the parent of a biter & suggestions that worked for us…

At the time of writing this I had just signed another incident form at nursery. Yet again, my son had bitten someone. There’s a mixed emotion when you are told this. Half of you is waiting for it, the other half is crushed it’s happened again. There are a lot of positives about J. He…