Category Archives: Summer Holidays

Swapping Barbie for Beads

Posted on: by Galt Toys

Freelancer Clare Goodwin teamed up with Ribena Plus to see what happened when she banned CBeebies, binned Barbie and swapped her children’s toys for beads and cardboard. Following her children’s initial outrage of kicking legs and tears, in less than a day, her children’s new toys became brilliant! This supports our findings from last week that traditional play is pretty fantastic. According to the Ribena research experts, children only need eight items to have hours of fun, named the ‘Pocket Playground,’ these eight everyday items are:

Coloured embroidery thread
Coloured paper
Drawing pencils
Wooden shapes or Building blocks
Modelling clay
Beads
Toy figures
Cardboard pieces

The ‘Pocket Playground’ will provide endless opportunities for imaginative play, encourage key development from an early age and the good news is we have all the products here at Galt Toys.

Our modelling clay is lots of fun. Youngsters can make lots of miniature models and ornaments with our pliable modelling clay.  Our how to guide will help get you started.

For a toy figure our Knit a friend kit is perfect.  Supersoft wool, needles, stuffing and embroidery thread can be crafted into your very own new best friend. The guide in the box shows you how to knit the dolls, their outfits and embroider their faces and hair. With options to create a boy, girl or fairy doll – everyone will have someone to play with!

The most expensive bracelet ever auctioned was a 4.4 million diamond encrusted Jaguar belonging to King Edward V111 of England. If your little one wants to have a go at creating their own beaded bracelet, our jewellery craft set provides everything they need. It’s packed full of beads, holographic stickers and glitter glue.

We love art and craft at Galt and we have masses of creative tools to power the imagination. Our amazing selection of art materials  give a whole range of ways for little ones to get arty. Our play paper roll and triangular pencils are perfect for creative mess.

Don’t forget to share all your art-tastic pictures with us on our Facebook page or tweet us @GaltToys!

Back to School

Posted on: by Galt Toys

It’s that time of year again when the summer holidays are coming to a close and children everywhere are sharpening their pencils in preparation for the new school term.

Whether it’s the first day for your children at school, or they’re returning for the next stage of their education, it’s an exciting time for all. So with only a few days of the holiday left, what better time to get them fired up and ready to go back to school.

We’ve got some great puzzles and games to help them develop their counting, reading and writing skills. They’ll have so much fun, they won’t even realise they’re doing Maths or English practise!

All about school

Our home learning books have been written by experts to support pre-school and Key Stage 1 learning. The colourful and imaginative series of books uses bright stickers, friendly characters and fun activities to encourage learning and develop foundation skills.

The newest to the range is the ‘All about School’ – Sticker Book, which has a host of fun activities and colourful stickers designed to help young children find out all about school life. This book will help by taking them through some typical school activities in a fun way.

Need help with those times tables..?

Dino Escape

Why not get the whole family together and play ‘Dino Escape’. The aim of this online game is to create a path across the river by correctly answering times table questions to help our intrepid jungle explorer escape the dinosaur. Every time you get a times table question right a stone will appear, creating a path, but every time you answer incorrectly the dinosaur gets closer – ROOOAAARR!

We hope your children are looking forward to going back to school and we can’t wait to hear what they’ll be learning this term, so don’t forget to let us know through Facebook or tweet us @GaltToys!

Summer Screen Time

Posted on: by Galt Toys

Summer Screen Time

We all know that at times being a parent is incredibly hard and time itself can become a precious commodity.  There is often a need to pop your child in front of the TV – just to have few relaxing moments, but consistent research reveals that children today are spending too much time watching TV, rather than playing outside or getting fingerpaint messy!

So to find out whether this was true, we conducted our own research and questioned 2000 British parents to see just how much time youngsters would be staring at screens this summer…… and here are the results!

The average child will spend 143 hours and 36 minutes in front of a screen this holiday – that is the equivalent of 12 whole days. This time will be spent playing computer games, watching television, playing games on phones or other consoles.

One in eight children now owns an iPad, with the average British child having £581 worth of gadgets in their bedroom alone – WOW!

Six out of ten parents admitted they regularly put their children in front of the TV or a games console on rainy days because it was just easier. While thirty per cent say they are forced to put their children in front of the TV regularly because there is simply nothing else for them to do!

John McDonnell, Managing Director here at Galt Toys, commented on our research: “Our routines are so often shaped by what is convenient and easy and screen technology, while enabling to develop certain abilities, doesn’t always encourage positive social interaction for children. It is really worrying that so much of children’s holiday time is probably spent staring at a screen this summer.

“The holidays don’t have to be like this, even if the weather is bad. Playing traditional games as a family, or encouraging children to make things and use their imaginations, is a far more effective and better quality way to pass the time.”

 

We understand that, as we all seem to be busier than ever, finding time can be an issue, but there is an abundance of great traditional toys and activities available at affordable prices, and we’d love to turn these statistics around ….

In fact, one in four parents wishes they could get their children away from the screens more often; while 64 per cent would like to see their children play more traditional non-electric games regularly.

So how much time does your child spend in front of the TV? Let’s get them engaging in traditional ways again and learning by playing. Help us see that the days of play are not over by sending your family free-fun tips, whether it is a ’make & do’ or a treasure hunt – we want to hear about them. Please send all ideas to our Facebook page or tweet us @GaltToys 

You can view the breakdown of survey results per city on this map