Article By Bridgette Barrett 

Montessori schools aim to provide each child with an environment that is ideally suited to their stage of development. This is known as the ‘prepared environment’ and is different for each developmental plane (0-6, 6-12, 12-18 and 18-24 years). However, the same principles are seen throughout for example, the majority of activities are decided upon by the individual child and theories are discovered not simply learnt. How and why the students arrive at the knowledge is just as important in Montessori schools as what they know. Key to these principles are the materials and resources that are used within the schools.

In Montessori schools the curriculum is divided in to five main areas practical life, sensorial, culture (includes geography, music, art, science and botany), maths, and language.

The very first activities that children will encounter in a Montessori classroom are those from the practical life area, where they develop their ability to look after themselves and their environment. Children practice skills such as dressing on specially made frames that were designed by Maria Montessori. These allow them to learn to tie laces - the lacing bugs available from Tish Tash promote the same skill development or to do zips. Other activities include using child sized versions of real life equipment such as an iron and ironing board and nuts and bolts. These activities help the children gain competence and confidence in their abilities.

The sensorial materials are a range of toys and materials used to encourage the development of the senses. Some of the first that a child will use are the geometric solids, which they can feel, sort and match – at a later developmental stage they will be introduced to their names. There are also flat geometric shapes which are fitted into spaces on a tray. It in this area that the well known pink tower is also found – aimed at introducing children to the concepts of 3D size variation, weight and stacking, much like the natural cubes.There are also insets with small knobs on the top that prepare the hand muscles for writing and sorting tablets that help children develop their perception of slight differences.

Development of maths, language and cultural knowledge also uses specially developed resources. Letters are learnt by feeling them and tracing their shape for which the schools use 3D letters. To teach time a clock with removable numbers and moveable hands is used, similar to the Pintoy Teaching Clock produced by John Crane. Maths is learned through a range of materials that enable the children to physically move objects as they count or work out, as Dr Montessori observed that children like to touch the objects as they count them.

Maria Montessori said that ‘Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment.’

The aim of all the materials and resources she developed, and those that are based on them is to foster these experiences and allow children to develop at their own rate, something that we would all aspire to for our children.

For details of Tish Tash Toys childcare provider discount please see www.tishtashtoys.com/childcareproviders.htm

Article by Bridgette Barrett

Agent for Tish Tash Toys 

Despite having nearly 700 schools in the UK, Montessori - together with Steiner Waldorf and home schooling - is still considered by many as an ‘alternative’ education. However, all of these methods are becoming an increasingly popular choices for parents, and some state schools are now adopting Montessori principles. 

So what is a Montessori education and how does it differ from the education that most of our children receive?

The Montessori Method is based on the research and findings of Dr Maria Montessori in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, who worked with children who had been diagnosed as ‘subnormal’ and were excluded from the education system. Working with these children helped her to develop specific materials, techniques and curriculum areas with which she achieved remarkable results. Her methods affected educational thinking on an international scale and Montessori schools were set up around the world. 

Maria Montessori firmly believed that children think differently to adults and will therefore learn in different ways. For example physical activity is regarded as key to children absorbing concepts and learning practical skills. Therefore the teaching materials and resources used are specifically designed so that children can touch the things they are learning about, such as shapes, letters, weights and temperatures.

Montessori also observed that between the ages of 0 and 6 children had what she referred to as ‘absorbent minds’ – a strong desire to explore everything around them and to become independent. Independence is a key feature of the Montessori Method and the focus in a Montessori school is on self directed activities – children choose their own activities and work individually for much of the day, in cycles of between 2 ½ to 3 hours.

The method stresses the importance of adapting the child’s learning environment to their developmental level. Children are vertically grouped (mixed age bands), to reflect the different speeds at which they develop, intellectually and socially. Montessori also stresses the importance of ‘sensitive periods’ - times during which a child’s whole being is focussed on developing certain skills, such as language. For each child, these times are different and trying to learn the skill outside of these times will be more frustrating and difficult for the child. Montessori teachers – often referred to as directresses – are trained to recognise these stages and introduce the child to the appropriate materials and activities.

Ultimately, the Montessori Method is based on the firm belief that every child is born with creative potential, the drive to learn, and the right to be treated as an individual.

See Montessori toys at www.tishtashtoys.com

Other useful websites include http://www.freedom-in-education.co.uk/montessori.htm 

This is an interesting article from The Guardian  http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1884006,00.html 

We like to run various competitions on different websites giving away children’s toys from the Tish Tash Toys range and goodness, have we had a busy old week making lots of winners happy!

We had a giveaway running on our MySpace page www.myspace.com/tishtashtoys which ended today as we reached 100 friends. The winners of three gorgeous wooden play watches are Leigh on www.myspace.com/lpolkadotd, Michelle on www.myspace.com/tootsie1977 and Stephanie on www.myspace.com/fannyryan.

Congratulations ladies - I have sent a MySpace message out to all three of you and hope to hear from you soon so we can send your prizes out!!

One of our lucky agents - Samantha Gargett who is based in Spalding, Lincolnshire, also won a £20 voucher for being one of the first agents who joined ourMySpace friends. Well done Sammie!

We’re also giving away a giant farm floor puzzle, perfect for any busy toddler - on Mumsclick

The puzzle is from American toy maker Alex Toys and retails at £24.99 so get yourself on there and enter that comp!

We also like to run competitions from other companies like Arabella Miller - winners to be announced shortly!!

Article by Bridgette Barrett

Agent for www.tishtashtoys.com

With a history spanning the decades, trading cards are making a return to the playgrounds of the UK, enticing children to spend their time (and pocket money) buying, organising, swapping and reorganising their collections. Once the domain of the boys, the girls are now joining in. From Doctor Who, football, Harry Potter, Hannah Montana and High School Musical, there is now a trading card set for everyone.

In the late 1970’s and 80’s trading cards were collected and children simply traded duplicates with their friends in order to try and complete their sets. However, in the mid 90’s trading cards were developed further by Wizards of the Coast. They took an idea from a pack of baseball cards first released in 1904 which allowed collectors to play a game of baseball using the cards. They used this concept to create Collectible Card Games; the first of these was Magic: The Gathering. This has now led to a new generation of trading card collectors. The first worldwide success of a CCG was with Pokemon in the mid 90’s.

CCG usually have a starter set or base pack that contains the cards needed to start playing. These are non-rare or common cards. Collectors can then buy or trade for inserts, subsets or booster packs. These contain a random assortment of cards that can then be traded until all the cards each person wants are collected. There are also theme packs that include related characters or features, limited editions, holograph and autographed cards. The rarer the card the more desirable it often is to collectors. Collectors build their own individual deck which they then use to play others. Each card has its own features and so each game is individual, and needs different strategies to win. There is a great deal of critical thinking and imagination needed to play these games, as well as teaching children about rules and fair play.

As well as the cards themselves there are a vast number of websites devoted to trading cards. Whether they are collectors trying to find rare cards in mint condition or sites set up by the card manufacturers which include game rules, record keeping for your card collection and information about the cards available. It is even possible to play against online opponents and some games have console games linked to them. There are also some trading card collections that come with magazines such as Dr Who. It seems that possibilities are endless and that trading cards are a craze that is here to stay. Useful websites are:

www.uktradingcards.com

www.go-pokemon.com

www.merlinonline.com

www.tdgames.co.uk

www.tradingcardsupplies.co.uk

Article by Bridgette Barrett

Agent for www.tishtashtoys.com

Every year, there are new crazes that sweep through the playgrounds of the UK tempting children to spend their pocket money. Some of these crazes keep coming back every few years, and one such example is trading cards. Some of you may remember them from the early 80’s, and then again briefly in the mid 90’s when they last hit the playgrounds of the UK in a big way.

Trading cards have a long history that is believed to have originated with 17^th Century tradesmen, who used to give cards to people to publicise their trade. Advances in colour printing in the 19^th century led to a huge rise in popularity and people started to collect the most decorative examples. In the late 1880’s the baseball card was first produced in the United States – one of the most collected items in history. To begin with, they were put into packets of cigarettes as a way of strengthening the paper packet and as advertising for the cigarette companies. Some of the rarest baseball cards - in mint condition - can now fetch over $100 000.

At the start of world war 2 the production of cigarette cards ceased due to paper rationing. However, after the war in 1950 Topps – a confectionary company and now one of the major trading card manufacturers – decided that a way to sell more bubblegum was to insert trading cards into the packs. The first modern day trading cards were Hop-a-Long Cassidy and film cowboy Frank Buck. After the war baseball in the USA experienced what is now referred to as a ‘golden age’ - High School baseball was played by far more children and televised games further increased the games appeal. This led to Topps producing the first modern baseball trading cards. Each card had an image of the player, team logo, vital statistics and playing record.

As well as baseball cards, the main companies also produced ice hockey, American football and many other sporting cards. Non-sporting trading cards were also becoming popular with events, films and TV programmes becoming the focus of trading card sets, often sold as packs rather than with a product. In fact, Topps dropped the gum entirely from their baseball card packs in 1991. Examples of popular series include Star Wars, Doctor Who and James Bond.

In the UK, trading cards were also increasing in popularity with sweet manufacturers such as Barratts, following the lead of their American counterparts and putting football trading cards into packs of sweets in the late 1950’s. This had followed on from companies such as Brooke Bond including cigarette style cards on different topics in their packs of PG Tips. In 1975 Topps took over A&BC Gum - a UK company - and introduced their style and size of trading card to the UK, leading to a playground craze that was to sweep the nation. Useful websites are:

www.topps.com

www.bellasara.com

www.battlesintime.com (Dr Who)

Just returned from having fun beside the seaside at The Brighton Baby Expo at The Brighton Centre. I have very sore aching feet but it was certainly worthwhile as we now have 5 more party plan agents who signed up at the show. A big warm welcome ladies, I hope you will enjoy joining our team and earning extra selling Tish Tash Toys at toy parties, coffee mornings etc!

This and all the enquiries we’ve had today about working for Tish Tash Toys at home, is really wonderful and makes it all worthwhile. I’ve left my little family in their Daddy’s capable hands for three days to do this show and can’t wait to be back home in North Yorkshire again.

The show itself was very well organised by Suzanne Borrell and her team at Sussex based SMB Events. I’m not sure how many people came through the doors today but it was jam-packed from about 11am – 1pm. Then busy until about 3pm, tailing off a bit after that. We gave out over 500 Tish Tash Toys catalogues, lots of purple balloons and had literally hundreds of people enter our prize draw. The stand was so busy at times - there were queues of people waiting to get to the front - how exciting!

The weather was amazing and there were so many fantastic stands covering everything possible for Mums to be and new mothers and their babies. My favourite stands were Yummy Lollies, Pushy Mothers, JAC Designs, Jakabel, JBPR Junior and Little Frog Interiors.

Great product ideas were to be found at the Hands Free Brolly Co Ltd and Beyond Chocolate. Amanda’s Action Kids was a small but hectic stand, with the music drawing people in. Sally Gunnell (who opened the show) looked radiant as she whooshed past my stand.

It was great to see Sam who runs Mummy Looks Fab again (hello!) and other businesses I’ve had the pleasure to exhibit with before like Little Timbers, Cuddledry and ABC Magazine. New friends include KitchenMonkey.co.uk who were lovely friendly neighbours all day. Hope you got back to Leicester safely and I will be in touch about the newsletter idea, thank you.

And finally – a big thank you to the simply superb Lauren who runs Fresh Agents in Brighton and came to help me out for the day. I could not have wished for better help and wouldn’t hesitate to use Fresh to source promotional or events staff in Sussex again.

Children’s indoor soft play centres are springing up everywhere these days and if you are running a home based business, you could tap into a very lucrative sales avenue.. This article was written by Jeni Hackett - HampshireTeam Leader for Tish Tash Toys

First of all, I’d say get the low down on your local soft play centre. If you don’t use it yourself, you probably know someone who does. The main thing to find out is whether you will be well received. Each soft play centre will have it’s own preference on whether or not they allow companies in to sell. As I’ve recently heard from one of my team members, her local soft play centre said no because the mum’s want to relax and have a cuppa while the kids go off and play. They don’t want to be “pestered” with the kids asking for the things on sale. Also, as Andy, one of our agents who runs an soft play area in Carlisle has said, space is a premium so any area you use is taking away valuable space.

It is definitely worth a call or visit though – you never know what your local activity centre manager will say. If they don’t allow you to go in, they may let you put up posters/flyers for free. Sharon, who runs Tish Tash Toys regularly leaves a stack of catalogues at three of her local kids play centres, Twiggy’s in Thirsk in North Yorkshire, Treasure Island in Boroughbridge and Funky Farm in Northallerton.

So, you’ve found a soft play centre that allows you to go in and you know mum’s are going to respond well…. What do you do next? Negotiate a good deal with the centre and sort out a date!

Next is to decide where to set up. The very successful centre I attended allowed me to be on a table right next to the door/exit. So, I got mums (and dads) going in and going out. The table was also very close to the paying desk and café so I, literally, had the best seat in the house.

I set up the table of Tish Tash Toys in the ‘usual’ way, displaying my toys in the best way I could and ensuring signage and flyers were very noticeable. As soon as I’d set up I realised I was on to a winner because here were my exact target audience and the toys can’t help but sell. I got a lot of interested mums early on and I gave out catalogues, order forms, etc. I did get some orders but I mainly sold loads of stock because the items are so great and affordable. I did get some orders afterwards which was an added bonus. I also managed to get a lot of interest in party bookings, which is fantastic.

When I thought I’d practically had everyone come to my table during the morning, I decided to pack up (also, my youngest daughter was getting a bit fed up of mummy not playing with her!!). When I did, I went round the building and handed out flyers and chatted to some of the mums. I’m glad to say that I recruited one of my new team members by doing that. As a double bonus, I recruited yet another new team member who saw our lovely ‘Happy Mummy Happy Baby’ flyers and asked about working for TTT.

So, all in all, a very successful day – lots of stock sold, orders taken, party interest and 2 fabulous team members.

I would say, give it a go – I’m going every month and probably twice a month near Christmas!!!

If you are interested in being an agent for Tish Tash Toys -why not come and chat with our agents on NetMums - we have a special Tish Tash Toys discussion area on there and you are most welcome to join us and ask any questions.

After several months working with website development company It’s Cold Outside, we are finally onto page two of google (UK) under the search term “wooden toys”. Last autumn we didn’t even show up on page 30 or so, now we are within spitting distance of where we’d quite like to be – on the first page! We’d certainly like to be sitting closer to our contemporaries like Mulberry Bush, Wooden Toy Store, Tulip Toys, Little Nut Tree Toys and Woolgars Toys.

A lot of the work we have done ourselves over the past three years – many link swaps in the early days, we wrote articles and constantly added content to our website www.tishtashtoys.com then It’s Cold Outside came along and offered their backlink services for a pretty reasonable price. I have noticed we’ve been hanging around page four of google for a few weeks and just received a phone call today to say we were ranking at number 6 on page two. Never one to rest on my laurels…I now want page one ranking more than I ever have!!

On a plus note, we are coming up today (as these things change from day to day!) on google above Monkeyshine, Honeybee Toys, Strawberry Childrens Toys, Hibba and pinocchio toys.

The website, which sells many wooden and traditional toys, went up to a 4/10 ranking on google last year which I was absolutely thrilled about and feel that must help a lot. We like to keep up to date with our two blogs, this one and my trek morocco blog and we love the fact that our customers can help with content addition via reviews on all of our toys. The homepage is due to be redesigned shortly with the whole website being much more agent centric rather than just another online wooden toy shop. We sell our toys via a network of direct sales agents – many of them Mum’s looking to earn a bit extra working around their families. You can find out more on our agent info webpage.

We also try to work on the keywords educational toys and childrens toys which seem to be doing very well also. Certainly our website hits are going up, as they are double what they were last year.

We’ve also been chatting with some SEO companies recently like big mouth media and justsearching.co.uk about further work they could do for us. So watch this space – as Tish Tash Toys is destined for page one of google!

Writing this on the long car journey back from Devon to North Yorkshire with two very sleepy babies. Hopefully Corinne Bailey Rae will do the trick and send them off to sleep (nearly three hours after their bedtime!).

Ms Bailey Rae’s was one of the first choices to go on my IPod when I got it a few months ago – as I really like ‘Girl Put Your Records On’ but ‘Trouble Sleeping’ is a nice track too. It’s a lovely album actually, very mellow (and good for sending the kids to sleep!) Didn’t I hear that her husband died recently though - just googled it….. apparently Jason Rae died this March after a suspected drugs overdose and I’ve found a picture of the couple in happier times - below.

Everyone in my family was subjected to the entire Leona Lewis album (Spirit) on the way to Devon, and my incredible background singing to accompany the lovely Ms Lewis! Fave tunes are the “I’ll be fine without you” track ‘Better in Time’ and ‘I Will Be’. Another good line is “Don’t pay no mind to what other people say” in Track number two ‘Whatever It Takes’.

Other favourite songstresses on my shiny black Ipod Nano are Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill) and the young pretender Estelle, whose’ album ‘Shine’ sounds much too much like the aforementioned Fugee’s frontwoman to be a coincidence!

Love Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ though and might jump over to that now as Corinne Bailey Rae seems to have lullabied my youngest to sleep already. 28 year old Estelle seems to have done very well in the last couple of years and her loving what’s underneath Kanye West’s jeans has made an impression on the top ten in the UK and the States.

Also listening to Duffy’s ‘Rockferry’ and still adore Kate Nash’s ‘Made of Bricks’. Just downloaded Madonna’s new album Hard Candy but not really listened to it yet. And if that sounds like too many girls. I’m also a big Snow Patrol and Muse fan. ‘Set the Fire to the third bar’ is incredible and I MUST see Snow Patrol in concert before I die!

Back to work tomorrow - with our business Tish Tash Toys…

Still unhappy about missing Dirty Sexy Money on Friday night especially as I’ve seen every episode so far and like it so much I actually had my new haircut based upon the lawyers wife’s cut at Toni and Guy in Northallerton last week! Hey ho - maybe I can download it and catch up before Friday whizzes round again!

Dan and I are really getting into downloading whatever we want to see now and not trying to be around whenever something is on. Technology is really changing now isn’t it and even I am embracing my new IPod although can’t quite work out how to sync my Itunes onto it yet. Shame as Dan has downloaded The Ting Tings album ‘We Started Nothing’ and I want to listen to it in the car. (Apparently her name is Katie if you were wondering!!)

Had lots of enquiries from people interested in working part-time for us as an agent this week which is great, and some interest in the recruitment position we have advertised on the Remote Employment website. We have people coming to us from Mumsclick as well which is nice as I’m really getting into that site. We even have our own Tish Tash Toys thread on Mumsclick now about working with other businesses.

Kids broke up for holidays last Thursday and we’re enjoying some time with Nanny and Granddad, although the family is very sad about Great Nan being ill in hospital at the moment with possible gall stones. She’s due for a scan on Tuesday though so we’re all waiting for the results of that.

My walking training is going well and more articles have been added to the other blog – Trek Morocco. Losing weight, feeling fitter and raised nearly £1000 now for Rainbow Trust.

Tasha has not one but two wobbly teeth and is very excited about the tooth fairy making her first visit to our house. Tasha’s reading is coming on so well, we were blown away today when she read the whole of ‘Where Are You Blue Kangaroo’ in the car (with Aleck very sweetly helping on all the pages which say “WHERE ARE YOU BLUE KANGAROO?”). As a special treat she has been chosen one of our pink milk tooth holders and has it on standby for when her first tooth comes out.

Aleck is still on his gluten free diet until the end of the month and has had tests for lactose intolerance too. He’s ok in himself just still producing horrendous nappies but the less said about that, the better! Trying not to think about it and enjoying the bank holiday weekend.