There seems to be so much emphasis on superheroes with super, out of the ordinary powers, that sometimes regular human beings who aren't able to fly or catch villains with their laser beam eyes seem boring!  How about doing a session on real people who are in their own way, super heroes!

What are the qualities of a super hero?

• Put others first
• Help people less fortunate than themselves
• Always willing to listen and be useful in all sorts of situations

Talk about real people who have these qualities.  See what the children come up with.  (Doctor, paramedic, fireman).

Doctor:

Visit a surgery.  Have a chat about what tools a doctor uses.  Are there any at your setting you can do some role play with?  Or perhaps set up a home corner like a doctor's waiting room and surgery.  Can you take a role each and be the receptionist, nurse and doctor.

Paramedic:

Look at a hospital on line or some images of hospitals and ambulances in books at the library.  Set up an accident: Teddy has fallen off a bench!  He needs to get to the  Teddy and Dolly hospital.  Carry him in a special pram or box to the hospital and act out what might happen.

Firemen:

Chat about what the firemen wear - their protective clothing etc.  Talk about what they do (rescue people, save houses from burning and help with road accidents). Also take a look at what they might use (water hoses, ladders etc).  See if your local fire station will permit a visit.  Take the children down to see the fire engines and meet a real fireman.

Making friends, especially if you are a toddler, is not always easy... some children are keen to have 'best friends', others go around in packs and some are simply not interested at all.  When you ask who they played with a nursery and they say 'no one' it can be heart-breaking.  But, we have to remember that some children are emotionally 'advanced' and understand the concept of having a friend; whereas others are more interested in playing along side another child with no interaction at all.

If your child is nervous of making friends or you want to gently encourage them to make some new friends, here are a few ideas for encouraging and guiding them.  Friendship is an important part of all our lives and the importance placed on making friends in childhood is demonstrated by the fact that 'Forming Relationships' is part of the EYFS and is a focus of Personal, Social and Emotional Development.

Here are some tips on how you can help children make friends:

• Give them plenty of opportunity to make friends: see lots of people and do lots of different activities
• Give them lots of praise when they do something kind to another person
• Don't force them or try to make them form friendships with people they don't like even if you like them!
• Try not to interfere when they are interacting or playing
• Be bold and approach people at playgroup and get to know them yourself
• Lead by example, chat to people and make friends yourself
• Talk about being kind, sharing and being a good friend while you are at home
• Support any efforts to make friends even if they fail
• Look at photos of friends and chat about how much fun they can be

All three and four year old children are entitled to free nursery education: 15 hours a week of free education is applicable for 38 weeks of the year. This is the case until they reach compulsory school age.

Where can you get Free early education places?

• Childminders
• Nursery schools
• Nursery classes
• Children's centres
• Day nurseries
• Play groups
• Pre-schools

For more information about free nursery education contact your Family Information Service (FIS) or local council.

When your child qualifies for a free place

If your child is born between: 1 April and 31 August they are eligible for a free place from: 1 September following their third birthday or the beginning of the autumn school term

If your child is born between: 1 September and 31 December they are eligible for a free place from 1 January following their third birthday or the beginning of the spring* school term

If your child is born between: 1 January and 31 March they are eligible for a free place from: 1 April following their third birthday or the beginning of the summer* school term

These details are based on a three-term school year.

Christmas is approaching at 100 miles an hour and will be with us in no time at all so make sure your craft cupboard has all the ingredients for festive Christmas craft to do with your toddlers!  There are loads of decorations that you can make for Christmas so make sure you are stocked up with crayons, glue, scissors, glitter, card, coloured paper, cotton wool, googly eyes and anything else that makes for festive decoration.

Here are just a few ideas of things to make:-

• Christmas Cards: make lovely glittery Christmas cards for friends and family, for younger children, draw pictures for them to colour themselves.  Older children can draw their own pictures with Santa, Christmas trees, reindeer, baubles, candles etc.  Use glitter or cotton wool to make sparkly or fluffy snow.
• Paper Chains: Craft shops will sell strips of brightly coloured paper with adhesive at one end.  Lick this and stick it into a loop and create a chain to decorate your house.  If you can't find paper chain strips, just cut strips of any coloured paper and stick them with glue or tape.
• Glittery Holly: cut small holly sprigs and dry them inside overnight.  Apply glue to each leaf and sprinkle glitter on.  Make sure you do this over a sheet of paper so that you collect all the surplus and pour it back into the tube. Try to beat the birds to holly sprigs with berries on!
• Snow Scene in a Jar: Find a jar with a screw lid and buy a small plastic toy that can fit inside the jar.  Ideally look for a Christmas themed toy, you'll find a Christmas cake decoration in most supermarkets at this time of year.  Glue the toy to the lid and glue some extra stones on too.  Use either an all purpose adhesive or a glue gun - this is definitely a job for grown ups!  When dry, fill the jar with water and add some glitter, put the lid on and screw it tightly and you have a snow scene.  Instead of a plastic toy, why not have your little ones mould something from plasticine instead?  Penguins and snowmen are fairly easy for little ones to make.
• Countdown Calendar: Although Christmas will arrive quickly, it will seem ages away to your little ones.  Help them see how far away Christmas is by making a countdown or advent calendar.  Give them a surprise each day, whether it be a Christmas picture, chocolate or some other treat, and they will be able to see how many more sleeps until the big day!  Use the exercise to practice counting, count how many days left until Christmas each day.
• Tree Decorations: Make decorations from the Christmas tree - be creative and use different materials: pine cones, paper or card, plasticine, clay, pipe cleaners etc.

These are just a few ideas for Christmas fun craft.  The most important thing is to ensure that your craft cupboard is well stocked in the run up to Christmas so that you can entertain the children with craft ideas whenever you wish to!

There is a constant public health message that we must protect ourselves from the harmful damage that the sun can cause, but more importantly, we must look after our children in the sun!  We still have a limited understanding of long term damage that can be caused short term exposure to the sun, but increasingly it is believed that a single episode of sunburn during childhood could lead to skin cancer in later life.  It is essential, therefore, that you look after children when they play out in the sun, especially when on holiday to hotter parts of the world.  You must also ensure that anyone else looking after your children, at nursery, with a childminder, or at school, also looks after their health.

What precautions should you take to protect your children in the sun?

• Apply sun screen with a sun protection factor of at least 50
• Re-apply sun cream throughout the day at two hourly intervals
• Re-apply sun cream after being in water, even if the cream states that it is water resistant
• Make sure your child's body is clean before applying sun cream, rub off any sand particularly before applying lotion
• Have the children wear sun hats, make sure that the backs of necks are covered too
• Avoid being in the sun altogether during the hottest parts of the day
• Create your own shade to sit in on the beach or in other exposed places
• Wear clothes with a stated sun protection factor
• In really hot places, keep t-shirts and hats on when swimming or playing in water

Be aware that sun cream is NOT recommended for babies under 6 months because their skin is delicate and very thin.  Chemicals in sun block may actually harm the skin of a baby.  Instead, make sure that they are protected by clothing and keep them in a shaded place, out of the sun.

Learning the concept of big and small may seem quite simple, but in fact, learning about size is a part of mathematical concepts.  Here are a few activities for the children to try out to help them learn sizes:-

Teddies and Wellies - Line up some wellie boots or shoes and grab a few different sizes bears and dolls. Try putting the dolls and teddies in each of the pairs of shoes. Predict whether the toys are too big or too small to fit in!

Dress-up time - Take a selection of hats, shoes and coats that belong to different members of the family. Try them on and decide if they are too big or too small!

Messy time - Make some hand prints with other children or do some yourself. Look at the prints together and say which are bigger and which are smaller. Measure them with a tape measure if you have older children or cut them out to compare them.

Story time - Read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and act out the story using chairs, different sized bowls etc.

Tubs and pots - Take a few tubs and pots of different sizes. Look at them and compare them. Fill some with water. Transfer the water between them to see which hold more and which are bigger than the others.

Books - Go to a bookshelf and look at all the books. Compare the sizes of the books and sort them in size order. You'll end up with a tidy books shelf too!

As grown-ups, it's easy to take for granted how easy counting is, but for a young toddler, learning to count is more than just learning a sequence of words as they might a nursery rhyme.  Counting involves being able to make a connection between numbers as words and a quantity of items.

This is called 'Cardinal Principle' and an elementary rule states that when you count a number of objects, the number of items in total is the last word spoken as you count them.  For example, if there are five apples on a table: 'One' - 'Two' - 'Three' - 'Four' - 'Five'.  'Five' was the last number encountered, therefore there are five apples.  This principle seems perfectly obvious to the developed mind, but this is one of the fundamental connections to make when learning to count for the first time.

Toddlers don't need to count items if there are three or fewer - they can look at them and establish how many there are.  No counting is required.

New research undertaken at the University of Chicago has discovered that children who are exposed more to the numbers between 3 and 10 as words make the connection between numbers and counting, and understand quantities sooner than children who hear those numbers less in everyday language.

Whilst this might seem an obvious conclusion, it reiterates the importance simply of counting objects over and over with children from an early age, and also of talking about quantities in everyday language.

Exposure to numerical language also helps improve mathematical capabilities later on in life which is much less obvious.  So by undertaking counting exercises regularly, not only are you teaching your children to count, but you are also improving their chances of doing well at maths later, which in turn might have a direct influence on their career path way ahead in the future!

Colouring has to be the number one activity, entertaining children around the world on a daily basis, but what does it teach? As with so many baby and toddler activities, colouring assists learning across a broad spectrum of skills:-

• Fine motor skills: this is all about coordination, young children will learn to hold crayons and to control their hand movements. Such control is essential before your children can start writing so colouring is a precursor to being able to write.
• Knowledge and understanding of the world: exposure to different pictures to colour in will help to teach children about the world around them; talk about the scenes that they are colouring, and make sure that they know what each object in the scene is, this will broaden vocabulary as well as nurture a wider contextual understanding.
• Colours: colouring helps your little ones learn their colours. Children will also begin to learn the effect of mixing different colours.
• Concentration: colouring will help your children to concentrate on a project and to see it through to its conclusion.

There are so many lessons that colouring a simple picture can teach. Make sure you always have a small pack of crayons in your handbag, and a sheet or two to colour in (you can quickly find pictures to colour on the Internet, we have lots at ToucanLearn!).  The next time you find yourself having to wait somewhere with your little ones, or stuck in traffic, you'll be grateful that you can just whip out some colouring, and your little ones will be improving themselves along the way.

A toddler in Plymouth has died after being caught in a window blind, his mother found him hanging from his bedroom blind one evening and tragically he was dead. The 21 month old child had been left just for a few minutes so his mother could prepare him some milk before bed, however, in that short time, he had managed to wind the cord round his neck. He managed to reach the blind by climbing on a chest of drawers.

The Royal Society For The Prevention of Accidents (RSPOA) has stated that since 1999 at least fifteen toddlers have been strangled by blind and curtain cords - which is a staggering and dreadful figure. They have said that the cords are a real hazard that people just don't think about. Toddlers of about 2 years are at most risk because their heads are big and get caught, they are adventurous and want to climb and explore, they don't understand the dangers and they are more susceptible to suffocation because their windpipes have not fully developed.

There are new British Standards which will help supplies sell blinds that are safe for consumers to use, however there are many thousands of homes which will contain blind and curtains that do not comply with the standards.

Here are a few simple measures to make your existing blinds as safe as possible:

• Keep all looped cords out of reach (including if you stand on a chest or bed to reach them!)
• Keep cots and beds away from blinds
• Use a cleat or hook to wind up any loose cord
• Secure the cord to the wall
• Use a chain breaker which will break if pressure is applied.

When buying new blinds try and opt for blinds with hidden cords, cords that don't form a loop, or those operated by wand that you wind or with gears.

Be safe!

2011 is the national year of communication; Hello is a campaign to promote the importance of children and young adults talking to each other and communicating effectively. Visit the campaign website at http://hello.org.uk/.

They maintain that communication is a skill to be learned and that it is a vital part of life.  The statistics state that over 1 million children in the UK have a language, speech or communication problem.  In poor areas, over half of the children begin school with language or communication problems.  This makes school much harder for them and can lead to all sorts of struggles in later life.

Hello aims to help those children by providing resources for parents, carers and teachers.  There will also be events throughout the country to support and promote the idea of good and effective communication.

ToucanLearn is very much in support of programmes such as Hello.  One of our key skill categories is 'Speaking' where all sorts of activities, games and ideas are provided in order to help parents and carers encourage, entertain and also inspire children to speak and communicate more.  For more information and great ideas, sign up at ToucanLearn where learning is fun for your and your little ones!

A new Mr Man book - or rather a Little Miss book - will be published in time for the Royal Wedding featuring a lovely, kind princess who moves into a lovely shiny palace.  It has been suggested that this new addition to the Mr Men and Little Miss characters is based on Prince William's fiancee, Miss Kate Middleton.  To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the titles, Little Miss Princess And the Very Special Wedding will be published in April.

Adam Hargreaves the author, was inspired to create the character in honour of the royal wedding later this year and is probably hoping for an invitation!   Adam is son of Mr Men's original creator, Roger Hargreaves.

The Little Miss Princess is described as "not rude or spoilt, but kind and generous" and is said to be "privileged but caring" and apparently she can "be a bossy boots at times!"

Over the past 40 years, more than 100 million Mr Men and Little Miss books have been published by Egmont Publishing Group.  They have been sold worldwide and more than three million Mr Men and Little Miss books are sold every year.

Sending off your beloved little toddler to nursery is not easy - you can't stop thinking about them all day and when you get them back and ask what they did, they can't remember, or did "nothing" or did "playing"...it can be very frustrating!

So what can you do to get a bit more information out of your pre-schooler, or school child? Here are a few tips about how to glean a bit more detail to find out what they did while away from you.

Keep it focused and not vague

• Don't just ask, "What did you do today?" ask more specific questions:
• What was the best thing about today?
• What did you play in the garden?
• Did you play with any new toys today?
• What was the story?

Make it two-way!

• Share what you did.  Tell of three activities you did and then ask for three things they did.

Don't force it:

• Details may come out later during tea or on they way home.  Don't force details immediately as soon as you pick them up.

Talk about your school days:

• I loved PE and when I was little I used to...

Keep it relaxed and easy:

• It should be fun telling each other about the day not an arduous task.  So, keep it perky and easy.

The truth!

• If you fear they may be telling fibs about their day, (they were visited by a space man and the teacher fell into the sandpit and they all buried her!) then, go along with it.  Make it into a fun story-telling activity!

What overall considerations should I have to find the perfect Nanny for my family?

Looking for a Nanny for your family does not have to be a struggle. Below are 6 points to hopefully help you make the process easier.

1: Think about your ideal nanny. Write a list of your expectations. What personality and experience you would like your Nanny to have? What duties you would like her to do, for example Nursery duties only or light household duties. Write your requirements down - including "required" and "Would like", use this when you are interviewing as a guideline. Work out what you can afford for a nanny so when you discuses salary with the Nanny you have an idea what you can afford.

2: Look at what avenues you are going to go down to look for a nanny. Are you going to use a Nanny Agency, advertising in a local Newspaper, ask friends and family if they know of any good Nannies or search on the internet? More and more families are using the Internet to find Childcare as they are finding it is a much cheaper alternative. All the above have advantages and disadvantages, but all have the same objective: to help you compile a list of potential Nannies.

3: Make contact with potential candidates. Once you have got your list of potential candidates, you will need to find out weather they are interested and suitability for the position. First contact might be by phone or email not face to face. Once you have made contact and asked some question and are satisfied by the answers, you will need to arrange an interview date.

4: Interview date. Don’t forget your list of "required" and "would like". You will need to make a list of questions you would like to ask a Nanny, (Totally Childcare has got a list of question to ask when interviewing a nanny). Most families prefer to do the first interview in the evening when the child/children are in bed and if they like the Nanny then call her back for a second interview, this is normally done over the weekend to meet the children and spend some time together to see how they interact with each other.

5: Checking Reference and CRB (Police Checks). It is highly recommend that you check at least two references, one from the current employment if they are working as a nanny at present and one from a past employment. If they have not got two employment references for you to contact then a character reference will do. A CRB (police check) needs to be done, this can take up to 4/6 weeks to complete. Most nannies have got this already but if this is out of date a new one will need to be done.

6: Employing your chosen Nanny! Once you have found the right Nanny and offered the position and she has accepted the finer details will need to be put down in a Contract of Employment (Totally Childcare has got a standard Employment Contract which you can download and use). This will need to be signed by both parties and each have a copy to keep. Most families have a hand over period before they go back to work; this is so the Nanny can get to know the child/children while mum or dad is still around. It also helps the nanny to see what routine the children have and if they got to school they can be shown where this is and be introduced to their teacher. Contact numbers will need to be given to the new nanny in case of an emergency. A diary for the nanny is a good idea, here she can write down what the child/children have done during the day, what they have eaten and if they have had or not had a dirty nappy etc. This can be helpful for the parents to read when the Nanny has gone home and answer any questions if the child/children is not too happy in the evening. A purse with some money in it for use during the day for the children’s activities is also a good idea, receipts should be provided so there is no confusion as to what they have spent the money on.

If you can remember all of the above steps than hopefully finding a Nanny will be an easy process.

http://www.totallychildcare.com/

If your baby or toddler attends a playgroup or nursery, they will be assigned a key worker who takes on the responsibility of liaising between your child and you, the parents.  The key worker assumes the role of primary carer for your little one, ensuring that they settle into the nursery setting, integrate with the other children, and generally ensure your baby's welfare whilst they are in their care.

The key worker is also responsible for reporting on the six areas of learning and development within the Early Years Foundation Stage and to this end, they will make regular observations and report back to the parents.  They will also raise any concerns about development should they notice anything.

The key worker does not shadow your child the whole time or play solely with their key wards.  A key worker will take responsibility for several children simultaneously and may only make observational notes on an occasional basis rather than every day.

You should always be made aware who your child's key worker is, this information is usually displayed on a notice board within the setting, and the preschool may hold 'parent's evenings' where you can interface directly with the key worker to be told of progress and any concerns.  Over time your key worker may change, and you should be informed at the time.  If you ever have concerns about how your child is setting into their day setting, then do not hesitate to raise them with your key worker.

Getting young toddlers to sit still on the London Underground can be slightly tricky because it's such an exciting place to be, and lots of other tube passengers are standing, so why shouldn't your little one?!

Luckily there is so much distinct iconography inside tube trains that can inspire even the youngest traveller to play fun games.  Look for different colours, shapes and letters.  Look around a tube carriage and you'll see yellow warning triangles, red circles for London Underground's logo and no entry signs on doors between carriages, blue rectangles and squares with notices inside.

You'll see the tube maps with lots of coloured lines on - ask your little one what colours they see.

Look for letters in the signs and adverts stuck all over the carriage, look for the letters that your children's names begin with.  Look for numbers - especially the number of how old they are.

Play I-Spy looking for items of different colours ('I-Spy, with my little eye, something that is red').

Older children can look around and spot all the different warning signs and instructions littered around the carriage - have you ever noticed just how many rules there are when you embark on an Underground journey?!

Of course most of these games will adapt to any train ride, and even journeys on buses or planes too.

You'll be amazed at just how quickly your journey goes, no matter how long it is.  Just take care that you don't have so much fun that you miss your stop!