Empty Nest Mummy If you remember from my post yesterday, this week I am helping celebrate National Storytelling Week by making up and telling a different story to the children each evening. And, if you read yesterday, you’ll remember that my shake-up of Rory’s Story Cubes gave me the following things that I need to […]
National Storytelling Week – a great time to Tell Tales!
Empty Nest Mummy Ever since Big Boy started nursery over 3 years ago, we have been a big family of tale-tellers. The only thing I ever heard from his year of nursery, where he did ‘nothing’ every day, was who did what bad thing to who. Fast-forward 3 years, and now with two infants at […]
Rainy Day Activity: Tiny little salt dough breads
Empty Nest Mummy With a cold howling wind blowing, a bit of a hangover and Northern Dad away carousing with his mates for the weekend, it was time for some quiet indoor crafts this weekend. As regular readers will know, we have done playdough a lot in the last cold, wet and windy weeks, and […]
5 Reasons Why You Should Have A Small Child
Empty Nest Mummy With my new-found time freedom, a distinct lack of hobbies and a desire to uncover the Secrets of the Internet, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs. As I have 0 hobbies, 0 imagination and 2 children, I’ve generally been reading a lot of mummy blogs. Now a couple of weeks in, […]
Parenting: Can a Headteacher Ban Relationships at School?
Empty Nest Mummy If The Sun is to be believed, he has ‘sparked uproar’ by saying that he would give these dating teens a bad reference and possibly expel them from school. I’m very sure that his views are motivated by a desire for his pupils to do the best […]
Parenting: 5 Things I Thought I’d Never Do as a Parent
Empty Nest Mummy I was wandering peacefully down the road this morning on the way to school, the winter sun shining on my face ………. OK, let’s be more truthful; let’s leave the ‘alternative facts’ to Donald Trump and his merry band, and start again…. I was half-running down the road, the bitterly cold winter […]
A Night Away in a Posh London Hotel Without The Kids
Empty Nest Mummy Thanks to a truly lovely mother-in-law (and father-in-law) offering to look after Big Boy and Littlest Angel for the night, I have just checked into Shangri La at The Shard for the night. Waiting for Northern Husband to sneak off work to join me, so I have had a good sticky beak […]
“What Did You Do At School Today?” – Top Tips To Get Them Talking
Empty Nest Mummy “What did you do at school today?” “Nothing”. (Is this sounding familiar, dear readers?) Both my children, now aged 6 and 4, spent their whole academic year at nursery doing ‘nothing’. Now, this nothing got them scratched, battered, bruised, splattered with paint and covered in mud, but it was nothing. Whether they […]
How to Make the Most Amazing Playdough in 5 minutes
Empty Nest Mummy We are big fans of playdough in our house. Huge fans, in fact. Littlest Angel in particular got into playdough really early on, and it’s been her go-to Quiet-Play activity of choice for ages. For more than 3 years, she has been rolling it, squishing it and creating with it. And, when […]
The Great Pocket Money Debate
Empty Nest Mummy Big Boy returned home from school yesterday afternoon and, as usual, got straight into sorting out his Match Attax (football) cards into a Dream Team to beat all teams. Nothing unusual about that, it’s what he does every single day after school. After about half an hour, I felt a little tap […]