Silkysteps

I wanted to tell you about our latest competition, it can be found on the Silkysteps website. Answer the simple question for your chance to win £15 worth of teaching mitts, finger puppets or story sets from Chelltune.co.uk. Silkysteps is run by Ruth, it is dedicated to providing FREE printable resources for the under fives and their early years education.

There is a busy Early Years forum on the site, I visit it regularly. It was on Silkysteps that I found out about the 'Million Puppets Project'. The Million Puppet Project invites people from around the world to make and send a puppet to Perth, Western Australia, for a new Guinness World Record - The World's Largest Puppet Display! Visit the link to see how you can participate.

Supporting other 'work at home' Mums

On the Mumszone Parents Forum there are a number of other Mums like me who work from home running online stores. Once in a while I will post about their business as they might be of interest to our readers.

I met the owner of Knot Just Jigs through Mumszone. Toniann sells traditional toys with a modern theme, jigsaws, educational toys,unusual gifts, mobiles, play buildings, height charts, bookends, wooden letters and plaques, gifts and stocking/party bag fillers. Also a large range of bedroom accessories. As I have just started my Christmas shopping by ordering from this site I thought it should be the first featured business on our blog.

National Bookstart Day

As we mentioned earlier this week, tomorrow is National Bookstart Day. The theme is jungle party. At Chelltune we've reduced the Child's Play Animal Signs book by 15% - just what you need to learn the signs for some jungle animals.

Five A Day

I arrived home this evening to find a huge box of teaching mitts in my hall way. Working from home is great but we really are getting squashed with so many new products arriving. Its getting to that time of year when I feel the need to declutter, it is 98 days till Christmas and I am already panicking about where we will put the children's new toys. Anyway, enough rambling, the pint of this post was to introduce the new Five A Day teaching mitt.

According to research, the average person in the UK eats less than 3 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, instead of the recommended 5. This is even lower amongst young people. The 5 A DAY programme and website aims to change the way people think, and highlight the healthier benefits of eating more fruit and vegetables.

The Five A Day mitt has been designed to support this Government programme by providing a colourful visual aid as a stimulus for teachers, parents and carers to use with young children to help develop an enjoyment of eating the various foods and understand why they are important for their health and well-being. The mitt illustrates varieties which children are most likely to familiar with.

National Bookstart Day 2007

Friday 5 October is National Bookstart Day 2007 and the theme is Jungle Party!

There will be hundreds of special events taking place in libraries and children's centres around the country. You can find out whats happening in your area from the Bookstart website. At Chelltune we want to join the celebrations, watch this space for some fantastic offers.

Angels and Urchins

The Autumn edition of Angels and Urchins magazine is out now. As a result of the press release that was sent out earlier Chelltune got a mention. They featured the Let's Sign: Early Years And Baby Signs A3 Posters. More information will be added to our press page soon!

Famous glove puppet set for television comeback.

I opened todays paper to see that one of the most famous gloves puppets is set to make a comeback. Toby Hull, will bring the wayward bird, Emu back to life in a 26-part comedy series, called Emu, to be shown on children's channel CITV next year. Toby is the son of the late Rod Hull created Emu.

'Emu was a TV favourite in the 1970s and '80s, achieving notoriety for attacking host Michael Parkinson while appearing on his chat show. Read more about the puppets comeback on the BBC News site.

Its funny, after buying so many puppets to add to Chelltune I have a sudden interest in them. It was lovely to walk into my sons reception class yesterday to see a little girl of four or five years old preforming a show using the class puppet theatre. Puppets will be making an appearance in my own children's Christmas stocking.

Whats been happening?

I’ve not blogged for a while, I have an excuse though, my partner and I got married at the end of August. About time really since we have two children and have lived together for what seems like a lifetime. All my spare time seemed to be taken arranging the wedding. I am quite relieved its over as it means I have a little less on my 'to do list'.

My son started Primary school last Thursday. It’s hard to believe that the little baby who got me started with baby signing is a schoolboy already. He looks so tiny wearing his school uniform and carrying his book bag, well actually it drags along the floor as he isn’t tall enough to carry is properly.

We have been updating the Chelltune site, there are some new images on there. A friend from the Facebook baby-signing group kindly forwarded some photographs of her son signing ‘tree’, ‘all gone’ and ‘aeroplane’.

In the past few weeks there has been lots of new products added to the site. We have increased our range of finger puppets and added Story/Rhyme teaching mitts as well as Traditional Story sets. There will be more of the 'People who help us' mitts and the 'Gingerbread Man' story set coming soon.

The last of the Something Special DVDs have just been sold. I am waiting for our new supplier to contact me, hopefully these popular DVDs will be instock later this week.

At home I have been thinking about starting my Christmas shopping. Can you believe its only 98 days till Christmas?

BBC Something Special

I have been trying to get hold of the BBC Something Special DVDs since April this year; I am so pleased to announce that we now have stock!

There are five titles currently available, we are still awaiting the Pets and Other Animals DVD, please email us if you would like to be notified when we receive copies of this title.

We also have two pocket books to accompany the DVDs, Makaton Favourite Things and the Pets and Other Animals.

Tag your Tots

All week GMTV are urging parents to make sure their young are safe this summer. The week runs from the 9-13th July and this year they are giving away 900,000 wristbands that work as identity bracelets (with two alternative parent/family contact numbers on).

I have Reusable IdentiBands™ for both my children.

A few months ago we visited Woburn Safari park. Since it was a bank holiday weekend the park was mobbed. I was worried sick that I would lose the children. It wasn’t the ideal solution but I put one of my business cards in their pocket. I told them that if they got lost then they were to show an adult my card so that they could phone me. This was fine for my son but I don’t think my daughter would have been old enough to remember what I had told her.

When we got home that evening I ordered some ID bands from www.icegems.co.uk

'IdentiBands are not only perfect identification for youngsters, but also an excellent solution for those with the need to alert others to medical conditions such as diabetes or allergies.'

They are ideal for a child who has a communication problem as all they need to do is show the band to someone rather than try to relay their details. The bands come with a pen so you can write what you like inside, I’ve just written, ‘Mum Tel: …………………. ‘

Justin Fletcher - Cbeebies 'Something Special'

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned Justin Fletcher on the blog. Justin is Mr Tumble in the BBC children’s show, ‘Something Special’.


Something Special has been a huge success and has raised awareness about children with different needs. In the programme Justin uses Makaton sign language. It features children in special schools who use Makaton to communicate. Makaton gives them a voice and relieves the frustration when they can't speak vocally. Justin is now a patron of Makaton.
When Justin was first asked to present the show he didn’t know any Makaton signs. He learnt in the region of about 3 - 400 in about a week, week and a half. His trainers and sign language experts, they continued throughout the filming to be on set the whole time, so if he had done anything wrong, they would have corrected him straight away.
Before working on ‘Something Special’, Justin worked with Dave Benson Phillips on a UK Playdays tour, starred in Fun Song Factory, Tikkabilla and Higgledy House (kind of slapstick, Laurel and Hardy situation). Justin also stars in the Big Party Live Show and Let's Sing Nursery Rhymes DVDs.

Recently there was an online petition asking that Justin be awarded an OBE, unfortunately he wasn’t on the Queens Birthday list. You’ll find quite a few news articles and posts about Justin on the site forum.

I’ve waffled on and just remembered what prompted me to post about Something Special! This morning my daughter sat watching it while I was getting things ready for us to go out. I took a couple of pictures of her signing rabbit (excuse the floppy ears, LOL) and dog. She was also copying him signing hamster, this isn’t a sign that I have used with her before.





We have a couple of Justin Flecther DVDs available at www.Chelltune.co.uk, see here. Please note that Justin doesn't sign in these DVDs.

At the end of Something Special, Justin sings:

‘Good bye, goodbye.
It's time to run,
Good bye, goodbye,
I hope you had good fun.
I say goodbye,
I'm happy that you came.
I say goodbye,
please come back, please come back, please come back again.
Goodbye!’

It seemed appropriate to end blogging in a Justin Fletcher style!

Bookstart - Books for Babies

Yesterday we were invited to our childrens preschool. The preschool/nursery had passed its accreditation. The Duke of Buccleuch attended to present the staff with their certificate. The children had spent the previous week preparing for his visit. They had baked some gorgeous sponge cake and biscuits. One of the teachers had joked with the children and told him that it was the Grand Old Duke of York who was coming to visit, a very old man who loves cakes! Luckily the Duke has a good sense of humour. It was a great day, I thouroughly enjoyed watching the children play. The preschool is set on a farm, it provides such a stimulating environment for the children.

Each of the children received a gift from Bookstart. Bookstart aims to provide a free pack of books to every baby in the UK, to inspire, stimulate and create a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life.
Their website provides parents and carers with information on receiving their packs, activities to do with their children, events happening in their area and a range of other resources. Bookstart believe that children are never too young to start loving books!



There are three free packs of books available:

Bookstart pack for babies for babies aged 0-12 months
Bookstart+ for toddlers aged 18-30 months
My Bookstart Treasure Chest for children aged 3-4 years

My daughter was given the pack for babies (not sure why as she is over two years old) and my son was given the Bookstart Treasure Chest. If you look at the Bookstart website then you will be able to find out how to get hold of your pack and exactly what they contain.
The pack for babies contains a leaflet, ‘Bookstart Great Books for Babies’. I was pleased to see that Twinkle, Twinkle Little Start, Illustrated by Annie Kubler is one of the recommened titles. ‘This delightful sign and singalong board book includes helpful hand movements to encourage the enjoyment of singing and dancing.’

Networking Sites and Forums

I joined MySpace recently but I find it quite confusing.

I also joined Facebook, I created a group for people interested in Signing with Babies and Children, it is called Sign Together. A few people have joined; I think Hannah, my friend who runs a Baby Led Weaning Site is responsible for recruiting some of the members – thanks Hannah!

There used to be a popular Yahoo Group for people interested in Baby Signing but it hasn’t been used for months.

Recently on other forums, members have been asking what the sign is for certain objects and words. I have some software that enables me to post the images for some signs; I have added these to the Chelltune forum . Please note that these images must not be copied!

DOWN'S SYNDROME AWARENESS WEEK 4-10 JUNE 2007

Tomorrow is the first day of Down Syndrome Aware week 2007. The following is a press release from DSA:

Each year, the aim of Down’s Syndrome Awareness Week is to:

-highlight a particular issue and campaign for action

-increase public awareness and understanding of the condition in general

-raise much-needed funds to enable us to continue the work of the Down's Syndrome Association.

Employment campaign

The main focus of the week this year will be improving employment prospects for adults with Down’s syndrome. We launched our employment campaign at the beginning of the year, and we have had a fantastic response so far. At their request, we have given further guidance to a wide range of employers who would like to access this potential workforce, from estate agents to auctioneers. A well-known TV production company have recently employed an administration assistant with Down’s syndrome after being spurred into action by our campaign. Awareness Week will provide a great opportunity to build on this initial success.

The key messages that we will be promoting are:

Out of a potential workforce of 15,000, only 20% of adults with Down's syndrome are in employment

With the right support, people with DS can and do make a significant contribution to their workplace

Many employers need more information and support to enable them to employ someone with DS successfully

Click here for more information about our employment campaign.

Click here to see our Press Release about the current employment trends among adults with Down's syndrome.

Shifting Perspectives

We are delighted to be hosting the Shifting Perspectives exhibition at London’s OXO Tower once again, which will run 6-10 June. This exhibition aims to do "exactly what it says on the tin": shift people’s perspectives about what it means to have Down’s syndrome.

This year, to complement our employment campaign, the work of our main exhibitor Richard Bailey will focus on young adults with Down’s syndrome and their abilities, dreams and expectations. There will also be work from Fiona Field and Rodrigo and Raffaello Raimondi.

We would love to see as many of you as possible at this inspiring exhibition. And if you can’t make it, please be sure to tell your friends about it! Admission is free. Click here for more information.

Host your own events

Last year we raised an incredible amount of both money and awareness, but we couldn’t do it without your help. If you haven’t yet ordered your Awareness Week Fundraising Pack, please contact the fundraising team now on 0845 230 0372 or e-mail events@downs-syndrome.org.uk. Or click here for ideas about how to organise your own events.

What is the DSA?

• The DSA is a national charity that exists to provide information and support for people with Down’s syndrome, their families, carers and those with a professional interest. It also seeks to improve knowledge and understanding and champion the rights of people with Down’s syndrome
• The DSA relies almost entirely on voluntary donations to continue operating
• The DSA has an annual operating need of approximately £1.9 million

Sign With Olli

We have yet another new product, the shop is filling up nicely now and there is more to come! Watch this space!

This colourful, richly illustrated book is the ultimate way for you and your child to learn to sign together.

Using a simple, easy to learn system, this book allows you to quickly acquire a large vocabulary of signs, sourced directly from British Sign Language, that are relevant to your every day needs that help you to improve your child’s communication skills.

Each sign is clearly described and accompanied by a photograph. Step by step, the signs are then cleverly woven into four exciting stories about the adventures of Olli the monkey and his family. The stories can be read aloud whilst the whole family joins in with the signs.

Sign by sign, story by story, Olli and his family will introduce both you and your child to this beautiful, expressive language, whilst helping to expand and improve your child’s communication and language skills.

The book features a foreword on the positive benefits of using sign language with hearing children by Television personality Sian Lloyd together with a contribution from Janey Lee Grace, co-presenter of the popular BBC Radio 2 show “Steve Wright in the Afternoon”

“Learn to sign with Olli” will enable both you and your child to discover a whole new way to communicate.

This book is sure to become a firm favourite with both children and adults.