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?