Divide of the sexes?

Vicky and I have watched our children develop over the last 15 months with a huge amount of interest.  Vicky’s daughter Charlotte was born 2 weeks after my son Will and we have been fascinated by how different they are and how differently they play. What we can’t decide is how much of this is just their different personalities and upbringings and how much a boy / girl thing?

The contrast between them often seems most apparent when they are confronted with a new pile of toys. Will has a limited attention span and tends to examine each toy momentarily before discarding it and moving onto the next one. Charlotte on the other hand studies each toy with great interest and takes the time to understand what each toy actually does. Oh, and Will seems to be immediately drawn to the noisiest toy in the pile, anything he can bang ideally!

Research from the National Toy Council suggests that differences in toy choices may start to emerge from as young as 9 months with boys drawn to active, noisy play, while girls choose more social and passive forms of play. It recommends that all children should be given a wide variety of toys and opportunities for play, without focusing on gender specific items.

With this in mind, we’ve tried to ensure that our Jack Boxes contain toys that meet all of your child’s play and development needs, regardless of their sex, from musical and bath toys to toys that challenge and develop their cognitive, social and physical skills.

We’ve already launched Jack Boxes for children up to the age of 2 years, and will be introducing a 2 years + box soon.  Take a look a let us know what you think of our selection.  If you think we’re missing a toy or book your child would love then let us know, we’re always looking to improve our boxes! 

12 months + Jack Box

If your baby is approaching his or her first birthday and you’re anything like us, you’re reeling and wondering where those 12 months went.  You are also know that the pile of toys and books you are spending a small fortune on are not going to last three months, let alone a year, before your little one is bored with them and ready for new challenges.  KidsLibrary membership is a great alternative to the usual birthday toy and book mountain! 

We offer gift vouchers so why not ask friends and family to contribute to a regular supply of toys and books, delivered and exchanged on a two monthly basis which keep up with your child’s development?

Here are a few of the toys and books you might find in one of our 12 months + Jack Boxes. Let us know what you think and if there’s a toy or book you can recommend for our selection, please get in touch.

Vicky and Nicole

Books

We’ve found lots of colourful characters for your little one to meet; from playing with Maisy the mouse, peekaboo with Moomin, and helping Rabbit from Acorn Wood find the perfect spot for a nap. Orange Pear Apple Bear is a modern classic delightfully illustrated, and children will never tire of hunting for the teddy on each page of Find the Teddy.  Usborne’s 50 things to do with your baby has ideas for games, songs, rhymes and creative activities you can do with your baby, and DK’s Your Toddler Month by Month will help you understand your toddler’s needs and adapt your parenting style to each upcoming stage of development.

Toys

To help your little one find their feet we’ve found a fantastic walker from Hape with moveable knobs, gears and balls turning it into a busy-box on wheels! And if they’re already off, BRIO’s pull along giraffe can join them on their travels. A classic drum from TOLO provides double-sided drumming fun and doubles up as a rolling toy too whilst water babies will love TOLO’s set of stacking and nesting cups which include a water wheel, funny faces and different sized holes for the water to pour through in a variety of ways. This chunky puzzle is perfect for small hands and will give your little one something to think about as they match the pets to the holes, and here’s our favourite, a pop-up farm house which they can pull, push and twist to make the animals emerge!

Sign up now and let us deliver a Jack Box filled with 10 exciting and stimulating toys and 10 beautiful and entertaining books straight to your door.  No fuss, no waste, no storage issues, no outgrown toy mountain or overflowing book shelves; just time and space to play with your little ones.  

KidsLibrary provides you with fuss free fun in a Box.

18 months+ Jack Box

Here at KidsLibrary, our latest challenge has  been picking our suppliers’ brains, scouring their catalogues and asking all of our mummy networks for their ideas and suggestions for stimulating toys and enchanting books to go in our 18 months + Jack Box which will be available for rental soon.

This is when the fun really begins; there’s so much an 18 month old can do, and as any parent knows, keeping an active and inquisitive toddler entertained and challenged is no mean feat!

Here are just a few of our favourites, but as always, we would really love to hear your feedback on which toys and books you think we should be including. After all, you are the real experts.

Books

Usborne and Ladybird have a great selection of books to help your child master some important skills.  Help them make the twice a day chore of polishing those milk teeth fun with “Brush your teeth Max and Millie”.  Thinking of potty training yet?  If so, “Princess Polly’s Potty” and “Pirate Pete’s Potty” could encourage your child’s interest.  “First colours” and “Touchy Feely ABC” can help your little one get off to a flying start.

Stimulate your child’s imagination.  Macmillan has a wonderful range of magical story and picture books including traditional stories like “The three billy goats gruff” a lift the flap book accompanied by a CD. Child Laureate Julia Donaldson’s classic  “Room on the broom” tells of the adventures of a witch and her cat in a wonderful rhyming style.  But don’t just stick with books you know, explore new authors by popping some lovely original stories in your Jack Box.  “Ernest” and “Moon rabbit” were both new to us and are utterly charming.

Toys

The chances are that by this stage your little one is making good progress on two legs, so first up is a lovely pull along Bumblebee from BRIO whose wings spin and hum.  HABA’s Ball Track will provide endless amusement, and an assortment of stackers and shape sorters, such as the Rolling Shape Sorter from TOLO will help your little one hone their coordination skills.  We also want to introduce you to Hape’s selection, which includes a fantastic Duck push and pull and a Pyramid of Play.

Is your child showing signs of being the next Adele or Justin Timberlake?  If so, he or she is probably enjoying making lots of noise too.  Hone their musical talents by adding to the cacophony.  How about a trumpet from TOLO or if you are really brave, a concertina from Play Toys?  And last but not least, some ideas for fun in the bath, a bathtime water slide and octopus, both from TOLO, make a welcome change from a squirty duck.

Sign up now and let us deliver a Jack Box filled with 10 exciting and stimulating toys and 10 beautiful and entertaining books straight to your door.  No fuss, no waste, no storage issues, no outgrown toy mountain or overflowing book shelves; just time and space to play with your little ones.  

KidsLibrary provides you with fuss free fun in a Box.

Rent, don't Buy

There’s a new trend sweeping across the Atlantic and onto our shores driven by the desire to give our children the best, but the knowledge that the best carries with it a significant price tag.  People are moving away from purchasing and opting to rent – they’ve even coined a phrase for it, ‘Transumerism’.  It’s not just cars, houses and DVDs that are rented out, but power tools, the latest ‘must have’ fashion accessories and almost everything to do with children:  clothes, cots, pushchairs, toys and books.

To rent rather than buy for babies and children makes perfect sense, especially for those items that have a short period of ‘usefulness’ such as toys and books.  Libraries and Toy Libraries aren’t a new idea, it’s just they are now available online.  Anyone that has had a baby knows how quickly they develop; that ‘contrast’ book that first amused them is quickly superseded by the ‘touch and feel’ book which is then itself tossed aside in favour of the ‘flap’ book.  Fascination with the rattle diminishes as interest in the drum grows; and that beautiful wooden walking aid you bought your precious little one for his birthday was only used for a few weeks because the budding Mo Farah toddled down the whole length of the kitchen at the age of 13 months.

Before you know it that promise you made yourself that your house would not become a shrine to discarded toys and books has gone by the wayside and a toy mountain that resembles Kilimanjaro is increasing in height each day whilst the book shelf is overflowing (again).  Then the guilt pangs hit you – not only is it a waste of money (there is no real ‘value’ in second hand toys) and quite simply a hassle to get rid of everything, but there is also the detrimental effect on the environment to consider.  The government has recognised that renting is a logical solution to the growing issue of waste and its Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) has called for 20% of all household spending (about £180bn/annum) to move from buying to renting by 2020.
There are other advantages to renting.  You can opt for a ‘try before you buy’ service and renting also makes sense when you are going on holiday and space in your car is limited.  Companies that rent out items for babies and children ensure they are safe and clean, something you can never be sure about if you are buying second hand items.  Toys, for example go through a quality control process to ensure they are not broken or dangerous and are generally steam cleaned after being cleaned with disinfectant.  You can get better brands for your budget, keep up with the latest trends and get everything delivered to your door which is a more attractive prospect than spending your weekends dealing with tantrums in the toy shop because your 18 month old child wants everything it can see.  And don’t fool yourself about how ‘little’ you spend on items like toys and books, the UK toy industry is worth an annual £3bn……………and its growing.

So next time you consider buying, think about the alternative of renting.  Having your toys and books whisked away every 2 months and replaced with a whole new lot is an economical, fuss free, environmentally friendly and all round sensible solution.  Try it!

Spending It Well

One of our main objectives with KidsLibrary is to reduce the number of unloved and unwanted toys and books that are discarded and sent to landfill. Over the years we have both witnessed the mountains of toys and books that the children of our nieces, nephews and friends get, especially at Christmas, and are aware that many go to waste, especially if they are a little frayed at the edges.

Having spent 10 years in Asia, Vicky is acutely aware of the poverty and lack of funding for schools in poorer regions and was excited when her friend, Kris Webb started a charity rebuilding and equipping schools in East Timor. KidsLibrary is thrilled to team up with Spend it Well and send our ‘too worn’ toys and ‘too thumbed’ books to East Timor where they will be loved and appreciated.

Spend it Well is working to help educate children in the tiny nation of East Timor which borders Indonesia. East Timor is incredibly poor and its children rank on a par with Afghanistan and Yemen as the most malnourished in the world. Despite their poverty, the East Timorese consistently nominate education for their children as their highest priority. Currently however, less than half of all East Timorese children attend primary school.

The Charity works with Kirsty Sword Gusmao (the Prime Minister's wife) and East Timor's Ministry of Education to identify schools in need and improve them by building new classrooms. Projects usually cost around US$40,000 and are completed in less than a year. All administrative costs are funded separately, so 100% of donations go directly to the school. Spend it Well has built four schools in the last three years and is working to put in place programs such as scholarships and school feeding in those schools. Spend it Well is currently working to identify the school which it will build in 2012.

To have a look at some of the projects Spend It Well has completed visit their website at http://www.spenditwell.com/projects/index.html. You can also donate funds. We would like to team up with charities closer to home so if you know of any worthy causes, please call us on 0845 1162630 or email Jack at jack@kidslibrary.co.uk

We've just been on a toy hunt........

Whew, just back from the 2012 London Toy Fair at Olympia organised by the BTHA (British Toy and Hobby Association). What fun we had – over 250 exhibitors displaying toys and games of every shape and size you could imagine from; dolls to drums; rattles to railways and cookers to cars. We had done our homework though and focused on the toy brands we thought you would like to see in our Jack Boxes - toys that are of excellent quality, imaginative, fun, colourful and not available in large chain stores – premium brands we can pack up and deliver to your door.

All our current suppliers were there, keen to show us their new ranges for 2012.  Some of our favourites were:

These Brio books that will look great on your child's bookshelf...............................but turn them sideways and they reveal a surprise of a colourful and stimulating array of puzzles.

Hape is a new brand we will be introducing – we love this baby walker, it’s got great features, but best of all it’s very sturdy so offers great support for a child learning to walk.

And Tolo continue to be as clever as ever – a toy drum that bangs, rolls, rattles and can be split to make a small drum kit. Click on the link to watch the video..........

Tolo Drum

a barn with pop ups, mirrors and squeakers............
Tolo Barn

and a clown that’s just full of surprises:
Tolo Clown

We also found some new and very exciting toy brands and are looking forward to giving you a preview of those, but that’s for later. See more photos of what we did on our facebook page.

A huge thank you to all our suppliers for their warm welcomes and enthusiasm and an even bigger thank you to my fantastic husband who looked after our children whilst we took pleasure in being children for a day.

And so it begins.....

It’s been almost six months to the day since Vicky and I first decided we should stop talking about our idea to rent toys and books and do something about it.  Already it’s been a huge adventure but it’s certainly never been dull.  We have had a lot of fun deciding upon what brands and publishers to work with, even having one meeting around a Barbie board table, and have been thrilled by the enthusiasm and support shown by the companies we are working with.  It’s a huge change from our day jobs! 

We’re very excited because this week our website has gone live so thank you to Mark Francis and everyone at Blue Flamingo web design, for coping with our endless changes and coming up with such a great design.  We would also like to say that we would not have got this far without the support and help of our very many hugely talented friends who we have tapped for all sorts of favours and advice along the way.  So, to that end, we’re kicking off this blog with just a few thank yous…

• Katy Dunn for your excellent copy writing skills
• Paul Gilbert for bringing Jack to life in our fantastic logo
• Kate Carey for making our Ts&Cs and Privacy Policy sound slightly less dull
• Alan Cunningham for your expert legal input
• Sarah and Chris for all their wise advice on running an online business
• John Sandalls and Rob Facer at Barnack Logistics for helping us learn and prepare
• Alison Duff at Calm-a-baby and Jennifer Flowers at Small Wonders Nursery for your advice on starting a business
• Friends and family who have been full of enthusiasm and advice
• and of course our husbands, Dan and Glen for their support and patience – long may it continue!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on our website www.kidslibrary.co.uk but don’t worry Mark, we promise we won’t make any more changes for at least a week!