Keep kids happy with Popagami characters

PARENTS panicking at the thought of long wet school summer holidays need fear no longer – Popagami Pop-ettes (created by folding sheets of paper) will keep the little monkeys occupied.

The latest Pop-ette characters come from Philip Craik, author of “The World of Popagami” – a fun activities book, packed with a dozen easy-to-fold colourful animals . . . and even a robot.

Philip Craik is a former chemistry teacher and engineer and has been a science technician at Ardingly College in West Sussex for nearly five years. He is the creator of Popagami.

“We have had tremendous success with the book of Popagami characters,” he says. “I know what a challenge it can be to keep children occupied, but folding these little characters will create fun and interest.

“The folding instructions are easy to follow and the little characters will be popular on children’s bedroom shelves.”

The book is ideal for long car journeys and holidays and is suitable for children from age six upwards

The World of Popagami is on sale at just £4.99 and available both online and in some major bookshops, including branches of Waterstones.

Visit www.popagami.com to see the range of characters.

All characters are the copyright of Pop-ettes Ltd and Ettes Publishing.

The characters in The World of Popagami include a robot, rabbit, meerkat, leopard, mouse, tiger, bear, cat, mountain lion, cow, giraffe and horse.

Peppa Pig Goes Swimming with your Child!

NEW! Personalised Peppa Pig Book

Enjoy swimming and splashing with Peppa Pig and George in a wonderful day at the pool in this new personalised edition of the Peppa Pig Book - Peppa and 'Any name' go Swimming available to pre-order on 23rd July from www.peppapigandme.com

Peppa Pig is a hugely popular pre-school brand with many children adoring the loveable but slightly bossy little pig and this book is your child’s opportunity to star alongside their favourite Peppa characters in their own personalised Peppa Pig Goes Swimming book. 

Peppa and her family are going swimming with your child, but George is scared. In this personalised edition will George learn to love swimming as much as Peppa and your child.

Personalised books are a perfect gift and a great way of getting your kids involved and excited about reading as they hear and read their name and see themselves on the pages of the book in the Peppa Pig illustrations.

Start your child’s Peppa Pig adventure at www.peppapigandme.com Personalisation options include; gender, first name, surname, hair colour and style, skin tone and eye colour , you can leave a personal message for the child printed on the first page.

Books cost £14.99 GBP and will be available to pre-order on 23rd July from www.peppapigandme.com and www.penwizard.co.uk Enter code 150935 at your basket for free P&P.

The award-winning self warming baby bottle just got better!

Yoomi, the creators of the UK’s first self warming baby bottle, has just launched a new addition to their award winning feeding range... the yoomi charging pod.

Using groundbreaking patented technology, the yoomi pod allows existing yoomi warmers to be recharged in the microwave in just 2 minutes, making recharging simpler and quicker for parents.

On the shelves since 2009, yoomi provides an ideal solution to quickly warming baby’s milk to the perfect temperature whether it be in the car, on a plane, out for lunch.. or on holiday! This is a truly innovative feeding system which can be used quite literally anytime, anyplace, anywhere!

No longer will you have to stumble around the kitchen for the night time feed or wait for the waiters to bring you some boiling water. At the touch of a button, this bottle and warmer in one, will warm your baby’s feed to breast milk temperature in just 60 seconds - making life just that little bit easier!

The pod now comes as standard with all feeding systems, making yoomi the ultimate baby bottle - quick, convenient and stylish. Recognised by The British Library as one of the ‘Top 15 Inventions of the Decade’ and the winner of two Gold Loved By Parents awards for ‘Best Bottle’ and ‘Most Innovative Feeding Product’, yoomi really is a product that every parent should know about.

The best bits about yoomi...

* easi-latch™ teat: thanks to its natural breast-shaped and super-soft silicone teat which allows for a breast-from-breast experience
*transition sorted: thanks to the consistent breast-milk temperature feed provided by yoomi, babies have the familiarity they need to support weaning from breast to bottle
*reduced likelihood of colic: with its 6 anti-colic vents (most bottles have 4) yoomi allows for a more comfortable feeding experience for babies
*easy pouring and mixing: yoomi’s unique, wide-necked bottle makes pouring and mixing simple – as well as clean and tidy!
* convenience, always: being suitable for both expressed breast-milk and formula, and ideal for either combination or bottle feeding means yoomi supports all parents baby feeding needs
*safe: yoomi only warms milk as your baby drinks, giving bacteria less time to breed. And of course, the yoomi range is 100% BPA free meeting the highest safety standards
* all you need: the yoomi bottle can be used on its own or with a yoomi warmer and all yoomi bottles, teats and warmers are interchangeable across the range.

Jim Shaikh, the inventor of yoomi commented: “we designed and developed yoomi to help make life easier for parents like us: to take the stress out of feeding – we’re thrilled that so many parents think we got it right… one mum went so far as to say that yoomi changed her life! We hope the yoomi pod can continue to give the same level of support by improving the usability of the product.”

The yoomi pod launched with the exclusive retail partner Mamas & Papas on 1st June 2012. Yoomi is is also available at Mothercare, Boots, Amazon and also online at www.yoomi.com

For retail enquiries, contact Baby Brands Direct

Fantastic fishy family fun!

From rockpooling to river walks, children are sure to have fantastically fishy family day out at the Pembrokeshire Fish Week festival!

Between June 23rd and July 1st, there are dance workshops, angling lessons, cookery classes, and much more all over the county – for children of all ages.

The fishy frolics start at Milford Haven marina on Saturday 23rd June - the opening day of Fish Week. Explore the heritage tug ‘The Brocklebank’ and the ‘Earl of Pembroke’ tall ship, watch street theatre performances of the Fishermen and Mermaid, and listen to tales of the sea in the storytellers’ grotto.

For keen young cooks, there’s a fantastic children’s fish cookery marquee, sponsored by Valero, where they can make their own delicious fresh fishy dishes with expert advice as part of a great family day out.

Come and enjoy art and craft drop-in workshops, pavement painting, and circus skills, or learn about the coast and sustainable fishing, and dip into touch tanks!

And look out for the Children’s Decathlon - complete 10 activities around the dockside and enter the prize draw for a VIP Family Ticket to Folly Farm!

If your kids love dancing, then don’t miss the new Dance Festival on Sunday, 24th June, also at Milford Haven Marina.

D12 will include contemporary, hip hop, belly dance and free running, featuring performances by professional dancers and companies and the work of various dance groups. Why not join in one of the free workshops, led by professional dance artists and teachers?

Also on 24th June is ‘Music and Mayhem’ at Tenby Harbour, a great day of beachside entertainment.

Enjoy street theatre, graffiti workshops, face painting and stilt walking, and be entertained by Matt the Magic man, plus Battlefield Live. Or join in with the assault course, volleyball and surf simulator on the beach!

Olympic diver calls for superhero effort for water safety!

Nick Robinson Baker launches Top Trunks

People across the UK are being urged to dress like a superhero for a day to save lives. The gesture backs Water Safety Awareness Week, which is taking place June 16 – 24.

The call comes after British Olympic diver Nick Robinson Baker launched the countdown to the drowning prevention awareness campaign last week.

Nick, 24, who became a lifesaver when he rescued fellow diver Monique Gladding from the water at a World Cup meeting in Russia last year, is spearheading Water Safety Awareness Week, by the Royal Lifesaving Society UK (RLSS UK).

Water Safety Awareness Week climaxes on Friday 22 June, when everyone is being asked to take part in Top Trunks by wearing their swimming kit over the top of their clothes for the day and posting photos of themselves online.

Nick explains: “The idea is that on Friday 22 June as many people as possible wear their swimming trunks and costumes over their normal clothes and go about their normal lives. It will be a really visual prompt to people to find out more about Water Safety Awareness Week.

“All we ask is that people email photos of themselves in their Top Trunks outfits to watersafetyawarenessweek@rlss.org.uk and that they pay a minimum of £1 to RLSS UK via JustGiving by searching on the Royal Life Saving Society UK.

“As I found out, you’ll never know when you may need to save someone’s life, and this will be a really fun way to encourage people to learn how they and their loved ones can be safe in, on, or near water.”

The launch of Water Safety Awareness Week follows a spike in drownings across the UK and Ireland in recent weeks.

RLSS UK - the national water safety and drowning prevention charity - hopes its national campaign will help to reduce the annual number of accidental deaths from drowning in the UK. Latest available figures, from the National Water Safety Forum, show that there were 420 accidental deaths from drowning in 2010 – one nearly every 17 hours.

Di Standley, chief executive of national charity RLSS UK, said: “We hope that the idea of Top Trunks will catch on and become more popular each year. It’s a light-hearted way of getting across a serious message. Even if just one life is saved as a result of Water Safety Awareness Week, then it will be a success.”

One person who will be following Top Trunks with interest is Leamington Spa charity worker Sally Crowther, 32, whose father drowned in Crete in 2004.

She said: "It was horrible. Unfortunately we'll never know what really happened but perhaps he decided to go for an early morning swim on his own and just couldn't cope with the tide.

"My dad drowning is one of the worst things that my family and I have ever gone through and I would never want anyone else to go through the same thing.

"I think that Water Safety Awareness Week is not just important, it's essential. Open water needs to be respected and understood. Please don't let what happened to my dad also happen to you."

Money raised from Water Safety Awareness Week will help RLSS UK to deliver water safety packs for school children, free community lifesaving sessions and the charity’s ‘Don’t drink and drown’ campaign.

Find out more about Top Trunks and follow the Week on Twitter at #WSAW2012.

Five top water safety tips from RLSSS UK

1. Teach your children to swim and if they or you don’t swim, go for lessons

2. Accompany any children in your care in the water, staying within your depth. It’s more fun and you can keep them close and safe

3. Never swim alone.

4. Only swim at lifeguarded beaches and lakes

5. Look out for lifesaving classes at your local swimming pool

Prospero & Platty Stories

Resurrect the art of listening

Is your child bombarded with fast and furious fantasy figures thrust upon them because you are caught up in the busy whizz of modern day keep-up-with-the-Jones’ living?

Do their eyes glaze over in front of a wide variety of different sized screens, shooting myriad colours and warring wacky weirdo characters at them in frenetic scenes?

It’s time to relax, breathe, sit comfortably together and, appreciate childhood as it’s meant to be: a calm and enjoyable discovery, a first flush blossoming of the imagination, an enjoyable contentedness and veneration of life.

Why not make for yourself a daily sanctuary of half an hour in which you can enjoy each other’s company; an unshakeable routine in which you know your child is listening to you because you are calm and contented and looking forward to the joint discovery of what adventure Prospero and Platty have got up to today on arrival of their morning post.

The Prospero and Platty adventures are specifically written for parents and children to read together. They are gently descriptive and are based in the real world, not a vast virtual vortex of vroom. They encourage sharing and problem solving, not fear of alien foes and fortresses. They are pleasant and endearing, not hard hitting and horrid. They are also original, and not a revamped stale tale. Finally, there are no pictures, so the emphasis is on the listening side of the experience and allowing the imagination to work with words alone.

Have a sneaky peak for yourself at http://amzn.to/LYyY56 and then decide whether to create that special routine to be endearingly remembered.

David Wilson has lived in the county of Surrey in England for most of his life and greatly enjoys the countryside with his beloved wife, three kids, two cats and menagerie of other animals. The Puzzle Box is his first book and the first in a series of adventures starring two protagonists which David has adapted from stories told to him by his father as a youngster. His target audience is parents reading to children and the books are therefore a gentle and descriptive read, similar in style to Enid Blyton. He writes under the pen name of John Sinclair, his given middle names.

Star alongside Fifi and the Flowertots in your own Personalised Adventure!

Help Fifi, the forgetful Flowertot, find Violet’s missing present in time for her party. See your child’s delight as they magically visit Flowertot Garden and meet Fifi and all the Flowertot gang in this fun and exciting adventure.

With just a few clicks your child’s name and customised character magically appears in the words and pictures of their own personalised Fifi and the Flowertots story at www.penwizard.co.uk

Personalised books are a perfect gift and a great way of getting your kids involved and excited about reading as they hear and read their name and see themselves on the pages of the book in the Fifi and the Flowertot illustrations.

Create a character to look like your child by choosing their hair colour and style along with skin tone and eye colour, add their first name and surname - there’s even an option to leave a personal message on the first inside page to create a truly special gift.

“My little girl absolutely loved this book. It was really nice as you could design the character around your childs features. The book was bright and colourful and well bound with a glossy cover. A really lovely gift for any child.” Mlunjwa|17/04/2012

With delivery within 5 working days, this makes the perfect last minute personalised gift for any Fifi and the Flowertots fan. Books are available from www.penwizard.co.uk and don’t forget FREE P&P with code 654235 entered at your basket.

Personalisation:
- First name & Surname
- Hairstyle & colour
- Skin tone
- Eye colour

Book Specification
- Full colour gloss cover
- 24 Full colour pages
- Perfect bound paperback
- Size: 21 x 28 cm

www.penwizard.co.uk