Decorating Your Nursery

When designing a nursery today's parents demand more than ever, wanting to create stylish, innovative spaces in which their loved ones can grow and develop in a warm, welcoming and stimulating environment.

To help parents in producing such a space, Monkeyshine, the stylish kids retailer now has a great range of beautiful nursery artwork and contemporary lighting solutions that can heklp to add a chic accent to any child's bedroom.

Their nursery artwork is by renowned children's artist Ruth Fielding, who is well known for her inimitable colourful designs. The artwork is presented on stretched canvasses which carry the image all around the edge of the frame ensuring these pictures look amazing from any angle.

The new range of European designed nursery lighting is both hip and more importantly designed with a child's safety in mind. The superb range of both low and mains voltage feature unique designs which incorperate the lightbulb into the deign giving real eyecatching design that will wow your visitors.

Nursery Furniture For A New Millennium

In the past choosing nursery furniture was easy, more than likely once you announced you were pregnant your friends, family and neighbours would fill your new nursery with hand me down furniture that had been doing the rounds for the past 20 years. If you were lucky enough to have a little money the choice was hardly breathtaking at your local Mothercare and anything other than a basic cot was pretty much unheard of.

With the rapid growth in personal wealth in the eighties consumers in every area became more demanding and this was also true of expectant mothers who wanted more choice, better quality, lower prices and above all a little designer chic to turn their nurseries into something special.

The explosion of interest in DIY and home renovations in the late eighties and early nineties fuelled the desire for designer nursery furniture with parents ever more willing to spend money to produce stunning nurseries for their impending arrivals. The dual desire to constantly reduce prices meant that the vast majority of furniture production became 'flat packed', self assembly furniture made from engineered timbers and modern fixings that produced incredibly strong nursery furniture that was relatively light and so cheaper to ship and easier to move.

With the retailers constantly demanding cheaper and cheaper baby furniture manufacturing moved over seas to the cheaper production areas of the emerging eastern European countries where wages were lower but production standards could be maintained. Then as a new millennium dawned the sleeping giant that was the Chinese economy awoke and factories sprang up across the nation attracting business from around the world. Inevitably the majority of nursery manufacturers followed the rush, moving their entire manufacturing base to China.

The move however wasn't entirely without problems. Moving the production base so far from the companies design and quality control meant they had limited control of what was being produced and as a consequence quality was sacrificed in the search of value. The furniture they produced had flaws that caused problems meeting European safety laws, which are the highest in the world for baby safety and the sheer distances between the factory and the consumer meant massive lead times with many ranges going out of stock for months at a time.

One company however chose not to make the move. Bebe-Jou was at the time a small independent furniture manufacturer that prided itself on high quality, design led furniture that created striking nurseries. By keeping their manufacturing close to home within Europe they were able to maintain standards and their market share grew rapidly becoming one of Europe's leading manufacturers of nursery products.

Their superb furniture is now available in the UK at Monkeyshine. With cutting edge design and brilliant attention to detail their cots, changing tables and wardrobes create beautiful nurseries that your baby will feel secure and comfortable in and your visitors will be wowed by!

So if you are looking to decorate a nursery why not take a few minutes to have a browse and see just how much nursery furniture has changed since those dark days of great aunt Pat's cast off cot!

Should Our Kids Be Wearing Hard Hats?

Safety is important. Advances in Health and Safety legislation and knowledge means our working and personal lives have never been safer which can only be a good thing.
However the invasion of health and safety into our everyday lives is now seen by some as having gone too far and if left unchecked could have a detrimental effect upon our children.

Research carried out by various UK charities has shown a sharp decline in the level of 'outdoor play' enjoyed by the average 10 year old. With unsupervised outdoor play falling dramatically in the last decade.

The reasons for the reduction has been put down to a myriad of causes including

The rise in popularity and availability of 'video' games amongst young children.
The perceived level of danger faced by children on our streets
The reduction in the number of public outdoor recreational facilities, such as council run playgrounds and parks.
The results of such changes are having a direct impact on children's health and wellbeing according to researchers. They cite the dramatic rise in childhood obesity as one of the major results of the reduction of outdoor play and warn of the potential developmental issues children may face from being wrapped in cotton wool.
"Children need outdoor play and some level of danger in order to grow normally" claims child psychologist Emma Drayton. "Through normal outdoor activates such as climbing, playing with outdoor toys and playing sports children learn a great deal of both mental and motor skills that are essential for adult life"
So should we be more willing to allow children to take more risks in life, the resounding answer from the professionals is 'YES'.

Quality Nursery Furniture Still Exists

With the mass movement of companies manufacturing bases to China and Aisa it is becoming difficult to source European produced goods. This is true of nursery furniture with many big names producing their ranges in the East and shipping them to Europe for sale.

Thankfully Bebe-Jou one of Europes largest nursery furniture producers is still keeping everything much closer to home. Their design team are based in the Netherlands and the entire manufacturing process including the furniture, fixtures and fittings is still kept within the European Union. Not only does this ensure lower carbon emissions for transportation it also ensures they can have close control of quality.

This ensures items of Bebe-Jou nursery furniture are of the highest standards and we are pleased to announce we are now offering their eclectic range of furniture to our customers.

Can Wooden Toys Save The Planet

You'd have to live in a cave not to be aware of the environmental issues we are all facing. Global warming is now universally acknowledged as the biggest threat to mankind ever seen and will have devastating consequences for millions of people. It's therefore important we all do our bit to help reduce it's impact and governments are keen to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint but how can traditional children's toys help in the fight? We all know that trees are important for the Earth's eco system using up CO2 and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. This helps to reduce carbon in the environment and helps to offset everybody's 'carbon footprint'.

This however is not the end of the story with two major flys in the environmental ointment.

1. Young, rapidly growing trees are generally the most efficient at absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Because older trees do not grow as rapidly they do not use as much CO2 or produce as much oxygen.
2. When trees die and decay, or are burned they use up oxygen and in the process release all the carbon they have been storing back into the atmosphere.

So how do we get the benefits of forest ecosystems without the penalties? Simple! Instead of allowing trees to grow old and decay we need to harvest them at a reasonable age and replace them with a new CO2 hungry sapling. Secondly we have to ensure the wood does not decay or burned so we therefore have to turn the wood into something useful such as furniture or better still traditional wooden toys!

So by buying a wooden toy not only are you helping to develop your child's motor, creative, linguistic and problem solving skills you are also doing your bit to save the planet!

This does come with some major caveats however.

1. It is important to ensure that the children's toy has been sourced from sustainable or replenishable forests. This is not always the case when buying Chinese made toys so it's important to check the packaging or ask for advice.

2. It'd no good throwing the toy away once your child has outgrown it as the toy is likely to end up decaying in a landfill and releasing it's carbon back into the environment. Most traditional toys have a lifespan that is much longer than it's plastic counterparts and toys such as a wooden pirate ship never go out of fashion so why not donate the toy to a local playgroup, nursery, doctors surgery or charity shop.

3. This is not a cure all for our environmental woes, it will offer short term benefits and should be seen as a very small piece of a much larger environmental jigsaw (a wooden jigsaw!)

So why not visit our traditional toy shop and invest in your child's future in more ways than one!

War! What is it good for - Boys Development Apparantly!

New guidelines published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families says nursery staff should resist a "natural instinct" to stop boys from playing with toy guns and other weapons.

The new guidelines claim that such role play under the right conditions can create the right environment to engage boys in educational activities and promote better engagement with learning.

The report says that many nursery owners and employees struggle to see value in such rough play when compared to the typical play activities of girls. The general view of such play is that it is destructive and non-productive however the new guidelines are keen to promote understanding of all types of play.

Boys regularly use "images and ideas gleaned from the media" as starting points in play, the advice says, which "may involve characters with special powers or weapons".

"Adults can find this type of play particularly challenging and have a natural instinct to stop it," the guidance continues.

"This is not necessary as long as practitioners help the boys to understand and respect the rights of other children and to take responsibility for the resources and environment."
Fostering these "forms of play" helps to "enhance every aspect of their learning and development", it adds.

However Union leaders have been quick to condemn this advice claiming that play with weapons are usually 'accompanied with aggression' and that such guidelines are simply 're-enforcing gender stereotypes'

Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said the advice took a "common-sense approach" to the fact that many young children favoured boisterous, physical activity.

Many boys liked pretending to be superheroes or playing at "Star Wars characters with their lightsabres", she said. "Although noisy for adults such imaginary games are good for their development as well as good fun."

But she added: "The guidance also impresses upon staff the need to teach children that they must respect one another and that harming another person in the real world is not acceptable."

Folk Toys - What are they?

I was recently contacted by an American gentleman who was making enquiries about British 'Folk Toys'. I'd honestly never heard this phrase before and was surprised to learn he meant traditional toys!

However I was fascinated by the term 'Folk Toys' and did a little research. This term dates back to the early part of the 20th century when children would fashion their own toys from wood due to the high cost and generally scarcity of retail toys. They would gather in gangs and make classic toys such as yo-yo's, marble shooters and Jacobs ladders many of which had complex mechanical parts. These hand made playthings slowly disappeared following WWII with the arrival of cheap mass produced toys, the rising standard of living and changes in children's attitudes towards 'home-made' items.

These is however a growing underground, particularly in the USA, of people with little cottage industries producing these wonderful toys by hand and keeping these wonderful toys on the market and not just in the museums.

Thankfully traditional children's folk toys have never really disappeared in the UK and are once again rising in popularity due to a general backlash against soulless plastic and electronic toys. It's good to know that this wonderful trend is being reflected across the Atlantic and with any luck we might see some of these American traditional toys in the UK soon!