Is your child always telling tales?

Put them on paper for chance to win a  story-writing competition

Aspiring young authors have the chance to see their work transformed into a story book with Silent Night’s story-writing competition. 

The Book At Bedtime initiative is now in its sixth year and launches at 2pm, Thursday 17^th May 2012.

The award is designed to celebrate shared bed-time reading and imaginative writing, and is open to children aged between six and eleven across the UK. Submit an original story featuring the company’s Hippo and Duck characters to be in with a chance of winning.

Ten finalists will see their work broadcast to the nation, narrated by award-winning author, Jeremy Strong and the public will be able to listen to the stories and vote for their favourite.  The bedtime story with the most votes will be made into a unique, illustrated printed book, and made available as a downloadable e-book.

The winner and their family will also enjoy a stay at the Pyjama Suite at The Alton Towers Hotel and all ten finalists will also receive a Silentnight Healthy Growth bed.

As Jeremy Strong explains: “I know from previous years that this is a fantastic opportunity to showcase some of our amazing, young creative talents – and the entries are always of a very high standard.  Last year we received more than 1,400 stories so we’re hoping to see even more this time.

“As well as highlighting how much young people enjoy imaginative writing, the competition is a great chance to talk about the importance of bed-time reading and sharing that very special time with your children.  I can’t wait to start reading them all!”

Entries can be submitted at www.silentnight.co.uk/bookatbedtime or by post and must be received by 2pm, 5^th July 2012.  Voting for the ten selected finalists will begin on the 26^th July 2012 and will close midnight 24^th August 2012.

Silentnight's Book at Bedtime Winner 2011

LAST YEAR’S WINNING ENTRY, WRITTEN BY 10-YEAR-OLD HAYLEY LONGTON

Hippo & Duck Visit The Queen

One lovely, sunny day Duck and Hippo were eating a bowl of clusterz, literally eating the bowl, when a formal looking letter slipped through the shiny door.

Suddenly there was an outburst from the kitchen as they both clamoured to open the letter. In the end Hippo won and Duck ended up flat as a pancake! He tore open the envelope and pulled out a small piece of paper.

“Dear Hippo and Duck,” read Hippo in his deep but friendly voice “You have the pleasure of joining her highness the queen of England for dinner, a limo will be sent to collect you at 11.00″

The two clumsy animals peered out of the red windows and waiting there was a sparkling limo. They smashed the glass of their multi-coloured house and, before you could say quick as a flash, were inside the jet black, stretch limo.

Hours later they arrived at the humongous, regal palace. The pair stumbled out of the fancy car and dashed, as fast as an overweight hippo could, into the gigantic building.

A man dressed in an expensive suit greeted them and lead them to yet another enormous room where an old woman in a puffy dress was sat, the queen.

“Wow, you know you look miles better on TV!” announced Duck stupidly.
“Duck! I beg to differ; I would say she looks ancient anyway!” Replied Hippo

The queen was bubbling with anger, her face turned beetroot red, she stood up clenching her fists. SPLAT! She flung the cream filled cake at Hippo and poured hot tea all over Duck.

“How very dare you! You are a disgrace to look at. Guards take them away!” cried the shrill voiced lady.

Two men dragged them across the floor and threw them out. Hippo and Duck!

Three little stoways enjoying Bertie & Boo's Adventure Island

A new land has appeared not so very far away Not far away at all if you live in Balham, London SW17.

Bertie & Boo’s Balham cafe is a landmark destination for the area’s children. Providing homemade cakes, healthy salads and a back-to-school vibe, it’s the venue for countless NCT get togethers. The eponymous Bertie & Boo are siblings whose grandparents were vaudeville entertainers and magicians. The current generation run the cafe along with a thriving party business delivering a mix of music, dance and magic. A new venue opened recently, in larger premises a five-minute walk south from the original cafe.

We visited Bertie & Boo’s Adventure Island shortly after it opened in the site of what was once a pretty dodgy nightclub. The premises are large, boasting a 100-seater cafe, soft play area and ‘Baby Island’ for the really teeny. Bertie & Boo films play on a loop on two TVs, and speakers play a grown-up friendly soundtrack of Bowie, Cold Play and Blur. Which is just as well because the children’s entertainer music starts mainlining into your subconsciousness rather too quickly. As the Bertie & Boo write-up on YouTube attests, ‘We guarantee you’ll be humming it for hours!’

Homemade cakes and fizzy pop

The Adventure Island cafe is nicely themed with a driftwood-and-sand interior. There’s ‘buried treasure’ hidden behind a window, a fish-themed loo and a rowing boat table to mess around in. Chairs are primary coloured, tables are old-style school desks. The food is excellent with lunchboxes for children and plenty of pasta and fruit. The soft play area has a small slide and ball pool and a few rope-type areas to climb and crawl over and will keep pre-schoolers occupied for a good half hour, probably more. During busy times you book for a 50-minute segment, which helps keep the numbers workable. Baby Island is too small – it only has room for four or so children – but its main attraction, a ball blower, has been a huge hit with my 21-month old. A the back of the soft play area is a ‘secret room’ for parties, drama lessons and story telling sessions.

Swimming around in the sea-themed loo

The Adventure Island is constantly busy, servicing a real need for indoor play space in an area packed with families. It could do with a larger buggy park and the soft play area won’t keep children aged five or older occupied for long. But for pre-schoolers with energy and parents who are getting a little too used to rainy days Adventure Island is a winner. I’d love to see some magazines and newspapers for parents, and think the pricing structure could be changed. It costs £3.90 to use the soft play area for 50 minutes, quite steep if your child is only in there for 10 minutes. Perhaps a free entry when you buy a full-priced meal? Or two children for the price of one during busy times?

Primary colours and painted wood walls make this a magical, fun place for children

So, the scores on the doors

What the children like: Somewhere fun-themed where they can let off a bit of steam and enjoy a cupcake.

What I like: Decent coffee, somewhere indoors to help me through the monsoons.
What the children aren’t sure about: Older children (aged five plus) quickly run the gauntlet of the soft play area.
What I’m not sure about: The ratio of cafe chairs to soft play space. The buggy area could be a bit larger too.
The verdict: Fab local asset offering great food and lots of fun – there are drama lessons a-plenty.

SCORES ON THE DOORS? 7.5/10. Clever Bertie & Boo.

Here's one I didn't do earlier...

This week’s newsletter was all about Flower Arranging by Vase. I know, I know, this doesn’t sound like a topic that should change hearts and minds. But I have a variety of vases in my house and rarely do I manage to present something in them that looks pretty. Too many blooms, stems too floppy, petals too small… I have as many excuses as receptacles.

With the help of florists Wild at Heart, Gwyneth went through each type of vase and showed how to make the best of the flowers arranged within it. And it started to make sense. Sort of. Instead of plonking in blooms you should handpick them and arrange them while still in your hand. Cutting stems on the slant really does help them suck up more water. Don’t overdo the water, and change it often. See what you think of my arrangement of some petrol station lilies and (what I think is) pussy willow.

And here's one I did make earlier...

Note the artful use of ivy twined around the stems. Wild at Heart’s Nikki Tibbles seems to have something against seeing stems. Ivy is something I have growing free up my garden fence and I’m very happy to make use of it. So while my creation wouldn’t make the grade at Wild at Heart, it did only cost  £5. I’m going to dust off my other vases and get experimenting.

I’m a bit late on this one because I’ve just come back from a trip to New York (yay! more of that later…). From Sunday 29th April to Friday 4th May, Bloggers from across the UK are coming together to raise awareness and funds for Save The Children’s #blogitforbabies campaign.

Click here to see a YouTube video about why it’s happening and what the bloggers hope to achieve.

The reason for this huge campaign is to show how social media can help save children’s lives in Bangladesh by helping to raise funds to buy seven new clinics.

Click here to donate – I’ve just done it and it takes seconds.

Here are some of the reasons why this campaign is so important to the mothers and babies of Bangladesh

• Every hour of every day, 11 newborn babies die in Bangladesh. That’s about one every six minutes
• 1 in 19 children do not live to see their fifth birthday in Bangladesh because access to basic services such as healthcare is very limited, particularly in rural areas.
• For every 10 births in Bangladesh, 8 mothers have to give birth in their home without a skilled health worker present, putting the life of their baby at risk.

Our new clinics in Baniachong and Ajmiriganj will reach:

• 21,500 women of child-bearing age with family planning services
• 3,000 pregnant women with antenatal care
• 2,190 newborn babies with postnatal care, breastfeeding support for their mothers and antibiotics when they become ill
• 2,218 infants aged up to one year, by helping their mothers to breastfeed and wean them safely and reducing the chance of life-threatening diseases such as diarrhoea and the risk of malnutrition
• 43,600 people in the area with information on how to stay healthy and where to get help if they do become ill.

• £5 can buy a brick – the most basic requirement for our new centres
• £14 can buy a set of scales for weighing babies
• £29 can buy a baby resuscitation kit to deliver vital oxygen to babies born with breathing difficulties
• £75 can buy a delivery bed so that every mother can be as comfortable as possible during labour
• £150 could pay for a health worker for a month so they can help delivery babies, and give life-saving treatment to sick children
• £2,500 can help build a well to provide clean water for the clinic and keep families safe from deadly diseases

Are you having a baby?

Are you aged 16 – 30 and based in the UK?

Do you want to share your story?

Firecracker Films is making a landmark documentary for BBC3, following young Brits embarking on one of the most remarkable journeys of their lives – having a baby.

We’re looking for individuals or couples, aged between 16-30, based in the UK, who are having a baby and want to share their story.

We want YOU to film yourself over several months, capturing the highs and lows along the way.

Perhaps you’ve just found out you’re pregnant, or you’re soon to give birth? Maybe this is your first child, or perhaps you’re already a parent? Is having a child scary, hard work, as well as joyous and rewarding?

Whatever your experience, this is a unique opportunity to tell your story, in your own words.

If you’d like to know more

Text: 07904 656 230

Email: baby@firecrackerfilms.com

Call: 020 7349 7048

All correspondence will be dealt with in complete confidence and by contacting us you are not making a commitment to take part in the final programme.

BOYS are so-called ‘reluctant readers’. Ask most primary school teachers and they will confirm that, generally speaking, we have a problem when it comes to persuading the less fair sex to get stuck into a good book.

Why should this be?

Are boys generally programmed to resist reading? In part I suspect so. Millions of years of gene flow have honed hunting instincts into the male line – the theory being that over the last 3 million years or so (since our apish ancestor adapted to walk on two feet) the most successful hunters will have fathered more children. So the instinct to get outdoors and play, fight or climb trees is expressed best through the male line. And charging around outside in a pack (playing football, for example) is far less conducive to sitting down with a good book. Conversely, the feminine ‘nesting’ instinct to feather the home would seem far more aligned to sitting down in one place and reading a good book. …So girls are instinctively better wired for learning to read.

Generalisations, especially when it comes to gender, are dangerous goods these days. But zooming out to try to work out the connections between things necessitates a degree of generalisation for the sake of trying to paint big picture. It is no greater a crime, surely, than specialising so much that there is no big picture to be seen at all.

But the gender issue – particularly with regards to boys reluctance to read – seems to go a great deal further than evolutionary instinct, so I have recently begun to realize.

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at The Federation of Children’s Books Groups Conference, at Bradfield College near Reading. It is an august organisation with a conference now in its twentieth year. The auditorium was packed with teachers, book lovers and educationalists (many from Norfolk for some reason, well, why not?)

The topic of literacy in young people is absolutely the bulls eye of discussion amongst such a group.

‘How wonderfully refreshing to have a non-fiction author speaking’ said one happy delegate after I had given my 60 minutes romp through the history of the world, with a giant Wallbook as a backdrop.

Why, I wondered, should ‘non fiction’ be such a big deal? Surely stories about the real world are so much more amazing than any number of fantasies you can dream up in your mind – as I try to demonstrate in my talks. If you love truly amazing stories then non-fiction’s the place for you….

At least that’s how it seems, if you’re a boy.

Facts, how things work, encyclopaedias, maps, books about nature, superheros from the past – this is the stuff that sets off fireworks in the minds of most boys. The tallest man, the bloodiest war, the biggest skyscraper….. these are incredible stories.

But I suspect (in fact I am sure) for girls, generally speaking, it is different. Fiction rules – fantastic non-real worlds are constructed for whatever reason – Escape? Romance? I don’t know. ….

Then, as I looked around the room, a penny dropped. Almost everyone there was female. The same is true whenever I visit a primary school – almost all the teachers are female.

So what type of books would these teachers generally encourage their pupils to pick up when they are being encouraged to read? The most natural choice would be to feed them whatever it is the teacher thinks is most appealing to a young mind – which, because they are female, will generally speaking be fiction no non-fiction! Hence the novelty of having a non-fiction author visit a school, or indeed give a talk at a conference on children books.

Now I am wondering if the problem with boys being reluctant readers isn’t so much nature but nurture. Perhaps it’s because they are being fed a diet of books chosen by females that are really inappropriate to the male psyche. If so, then hurrah! We really ought to be able to do something about it.

The boys’ selection is good. There isn’t a Nerf gun in sight (I say ‘yay’, sons alas say ‘nay’), but what’s not to like about an icky X-Ray Frog Anatomy Model or very rock ‘n’ roll looking red guitar?

For girls, all is subtly and not-so-subtly pink and glittery. There are dolls, dollshouses, make-it-yourself kits galore to stitch dogs and other delights and make-up galore. For someone who practically cried one Christmas when she got some peel-off Tinkerbell nail polish in her stocking, this looks like heaven.

Order quick, spend £15 or more and you might just get hold of a Piggy Paint nail varnish. Eco friendly and in a very nice pink, it might be worth keeping it for yourself.

"I'm the best so why try harder?"

I read Samantha Brick’s article in the Daily Mail about women resenting her for her beauty. I know just how she feels. While my ready smile and pleasing appearance have both been remarked upon, I’m primarily the object of envy because of my perfect children. As the mother of four impeccably behaved and impossibly handsome, talented and gifted sons, I know exactly how it feels to be at the receiving end of jealous comments. It seems that some people find others living the dream just too much to handle.

On a bus earlier this week a row of complete strangers gave up their seats for me and my brood. “We’ll just nip up to the top deck” one old lady smiled as she picked up her walking stick from the floor. I don’t think one of my boys had accidentally thrown it there.

You’re probably thinking ‘what a lovely surprise gesture’. But while it was lovely, it wasn’t a surprise. At least, not for me.

Since becoming the mother of four boys I’ve regularly had people move mountains for my brood. Almost literally in some cases. One gentleman even decided to go on a later train in order to make sure my boys had sufficient seating and space for themselves and their toys. I think he said something like, “Goodness, what a delightful handful!” as he retrieved the briefcase he had kindly lent as a mini trampoline. I couldn’t help but notice other mothers look on with envy as my children enjoyed enough space for 10 people while they, and their inferior brood, had to share a single seat.

It’s the same walking down the street. On any given day I’ll pass scores of inferior children. Some of them can barely scoot in a straight line. Others are in buggies that could never be considered designer. I never comment, it would be rude, but it’s hard not to notice the green-eyed glances cast in the direction of our personalised, bespoke buggy emblazoned with the children’s names in neon-lit diamante crystals.

In restaurants we regularly get served before other families and usually get free ice cream. To go. “On a cone for your little dears. No need to pay. The door is right here”, directs the surprisingly smiley restaurant manager.

Having perfect children is obviously a wonderful blessing. But it can be hard for outsiders to appreciate that we don’t have a completely perfect life. Only yesterday one of my children was exposed to a child with nits. And at birthday parties other mothers rarely accept that one of my children is going to outshine theirs in the birthday photos. “He’s really taking over the shot” I overheard a friend say at a sixth birthday party, and I knew she meant my child’s superior looks and superstar smile compared to the poor birthday boy’s wonky grin. And playdates are rarely repeated because the temptation to kidnap my perfect children is too much of a temptation for less fortunate parents.

The time has surely come to stop judging perfect children so harshly. Someone has to be the best and it doesn’t mean other children are without merit. There’s nothing wrong with being average. Unless you’re a child of mine.

We had such high hopes. It was the oldest’s birthday last week and the lucky boy was given scores of presents. One of them he was hugely excited about. It was a kit to make a robot out of an old tin can. As it was endorsed by the Science Museum I had fairly high hopes about it and put the kit to one side for a rainy Easter day. Alas, we’ve now had a few of those and the tin can robot made its first wobbly steps over the weekend.

A broken reinvention of the wheel

Alas, a vital cog was already broken before we’d opened the packaging. I superglued it together and hoped for the best. Some of the other components, including the arms, were different versions of the ones illustrated, but we managed to put it all together. Apart from the battery plate which didn’t fit, and we also ended up with two extra screws. I hope they haven’t fallen out of anyone else’s set, leaving them with a mission impossible to put it together.

We ended up with a wonky looking ‘robot’ which could just about shuffle along the floor. But if the Science Museum are going to put their name to toys posing as environmental experiments they should try harder. This is a definition I discovered for a robot:

A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or remotely controlled. The word robot first appeared in the play Rossum’s Universal Robots by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in 1920.

Does being able to move across the floor count as a ‘task’? And no intelligence was displayed, virtual or otherwise. And surely the least you can expect of an expensive kit is for it to arrive in one piece with no missing or broken parts. In short, the used tin can wasn’t the only thing that could be described as rubbish.