se words

from Families Oxfordshire March April 2023 Easter issue

by Families Magazine

What’s On

facebook.com/familieseastoxfordshiremag

A FAMILY TICKET TO SEE A ZOG*

Based on the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Schefﬂer. Large in size and keen in nature, Zog is eager to win a golden star at Madam Dragon’s school, where dragons learn all the things that dragons need to know. Zog tries so very hard, perhaps too hard, and he bumps, burns and roars his way through years one, two and three. Luckily, the plucky Princess Pearl patches him up ready to face his biggest challenge yet… a duel with knight Sir Gadabout the Great!

EDITOR: Lisa Exell 01945 861336, editor@familiesOxfordshire.co.uk

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Amanda Dawson, admin@familiescambridgeshire.co.uk

SOCIAL MEDIA: Amanda Dawson, admin@familiescambridgeshire.co.uk

DESIGN: Caroline Thompson-Heap, info@cheekymonkeydesigns.net

DON’T MISS A COPY! Receive Families Oxfordshire by post for just £9.30 for 6 issues (1 year) or £18 for 12 issues (2 years). Call or email editor@familiesOxfordshire.co.uk for a subscription form.

Families Oxfordshire is part of Families Print Ltd, a franchise company. All franchised magazines in the group are independently owned and operated under licence. Families is a registered trademark of LCMB Ltd, Remenham House, Regatta Place, Marlow Road, Bourne End, Bucks SL8 5TD. The contents of Families Oxfordshire are fully protected by copyright and none of the editorial or photographic matter may be reproduced in any form without prior consent of Families Oxfordshire. Every care is taken in the preparation of this magazine, but Families Oxfordshire its distributors, the franchise company, Families Print Ltd, and LCMB Ltd cannot be held responsible for the claims of advertisers nor for the accuracy of the contents, or any consequence thereof.

Would tries post. *A family ticket (4 tickets) to see any performance between Open 8am-6pm 27 March – 14 April

We are currently recruiting hosts who can offer a spare bedroom, three meals per day and the required lessons and activities.

You choose who to host and when to host! Earn up to £1,000 per week.

Families Oxfordshire reaches over 40,000 readers and is available through schools, nurseries, hospitals, clubs and classes, selected shops and restaurants. If you would like copies for your establishment please let us know.

family tickets* worth £70 to The Little Welly!

The Little Welly is the UK’s biggest obstacle courses for children. This year the event will take place by the river in Henley on the 10th & 11th June. The Little Welly experience is all about getting kids active and outdoors. Running, jumping, climbing and of course getting muddy. There will be 30 big obstacles over 3km including foam, water, ropes, and slides.

As well as the obstacle course The Little Welly is also a ‘whole day out’. With pony rides, face painting, fun activities, live entertainment, music, food and drink you’ll ﬁnd something for everyone at the family festival.

(*The competition prize is for x2 child obstacle and festival tickets and x2 adult assist obstacle course and festival tickets, worth over £70. Winners will be provided with a discount code for the full value. Tickets are valid at any day/any time between 9.30am and 4.30pm).

oin us by the river for 3km of bstacles and www.thelit

Trusted childcare this Easter

Are you In need of trusted childcare this Easter? SuperCamps has four camps operating in Oxfordshire, all Ofsted-registered with enthusiastic and professional staff ready to make the holiday memorable. Use the discount FM10* for 10% off any bookings at Oxfordshire Easter Multi-Activity camps.

SuperCamps is an Ofsted-registered provider of Half-Term, Easter and Summer camps in the UK for children aged 4- 14 years. They offer Multi-Activity camps that act as a convenient, ﬂexible childcare option, bookable as individual days or a week at a time and with extended hour options to help working parents with early drop-offs and late pick-ups. With an abundance of engaging school holiday activities to keep kids entertained. From sports to outdoor explorations, arts and crafts to team games, offering a wide range of holiday activities aimed towards children aged 4-5 years, 6-9 years and 10-12 years.

These sports and skills-based courses run across multiple days (5 days) exploring techniques and ideas that enable children to grasp content quickly and understand it in a useful context

With camps in Abingdon Prep School, Abingdon School, Oxford High School and St Mary’s School (Henley). For children aged 4 and above, *Discount available until April 14.

Screen-Free entertainment

Screen-free entertainment that doesn’t need to connect to any other device for playback is every parents dream. Award winning StoryPhones does just that! They are able to store and play audio content at any time, and come with a library full of carefully curated content, suitable for children aged 3 and up, that entertains and educates with audio stories, music and more. This carefully selected content allows parents to relax, knowing it’s not necessary to monitor what children are listening to. You can even record personalised stories or a bedtime lullaby in a loved one’s voice and stay connected with loved ones far away. An entertaining way to boost creativity and decrease screen time and great for long car journeys too. The StoryPhones are available from StoryPhones.com, Amazon UK and Harvey Norman (Ireland) with the StoryPhones Disney bundle with a Minnie or Mickey Mouse disc at an RRP of £84.99 in pink and blue and the StoryPhones bundle with two StoryShields [Travel and Relax/Creative] in grey or snow white for an RRP of £84.99.

Quick and useful food for your freezer: Food you love, in way less time

Stocked Food is everything you want from a food subscription box, quick, easy, tasty and nutritious food. Childhood friends, Sam Moss and Charlie Gilpin together create nutritious, chef-cooked, award-winning meals, frozen into space saving, personally portioned blocks.. Make the meals you love in less than ﬁve minutes, great for busy parents, new parents or even parents that want to send their son or daughter off to university with healthy, quick and easy food while away from home.

Sam and Charlie are on a mission to make the most useful, delicious and nourishing food you can have in your freezer, they freeze an array of delicious meals into handy, easily stored little blocks that take less than ﬁve minutes to heat up and transform back into fresh and tasty meals. Each pack of Stocked contains eight blocks, enough to make 2-4 meals; simply heat and eat them as they are or use them as building blocks for an endless variety of meals.

With dishes inspired by cuisines from around the world, choose from Great Taste Award winning Chicken Tinga and Pork Rendang, or opt for specials like Sausage Arrabbiata and Saag Tempeh. Half of Stocked blocks are plant based, choose from Hearty Vegan Ragu, Harissa Jackfruit or specials like Black Dal and Smokey ‘No’rizo’.

Serve simply with rice, baked potato or pasta or use them as ﬁllings for a lunchtime wrap or sandwiches, get creative at dinner with tacos, nachos and curries or add eggs for brunch dishes.

Prices start at £42.00 from as little as £1.10 when you pick a six-pack subscription, courier delivery included. www.stockedfood.com

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is most popular book

Roald Dahl has scooped the top three places in a list of the UK’s favourite children’s reads from the past eighty years.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, ﬁrst published in 1964 and illustrated by Quentin Blake, tops the poll of two thousand parents of children ages 1 to 12 commissioned by the CILIP Carnegie Medal.

The BFG (1982) and Matilda (1988), both also illustrated by Blake, followed in second and third place respectively.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal are the UK’s longest running children’s book awards, recognising outstanding reading experiences created through writing and illustration in books for children and young people. The poll also revealed that the majority of parents read to their kids for an average of two hours per week and over eighty percent prefer print books to e-books. To view the Top 15 go to www.thebookseller.com/news

Perform

Perform offers a different type of children’s drama class. They don’t focus on creating perfect dancers or the next child stars. Instead, they put children’s social development at the heart of their classes, using a specially formulated mix of drama, dance and singing to bring out every child’s true potential. Exciting termly themes keep young imaginations buzzing while small class sizes ensure lots of individual attention from experienced professionally trained actors, dancers and singers. Classes are for children of all abilities and they can join at any point in the term; the only requirement is to be ready to have the best fun of the week!

From April to July, 4-7s will be setting sail on the Jammy Dodger in Mermaids & Pirates whilst 7-12s will take part in The Dream, an hilarious adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Classes run in Oxfordshire. To book a FREE trial class, visit www.perform.org.uk/try

Children who watch violent TV perform less well

Children as young as age 3 who watch violent TV perform less well once at secondary school than their peers, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Montreal say children who are exposed to violence on screen are less engaged and motivated in the classroom and their grades are worse than those who don’t by the time they reach age 12.

Lead study author, Professor Linda Pagani explained: ‘Pre-school children tend to identify with characters on TV and treat everything they see as real.

‘They are especially vulnerable to humorous depictions of gloriﬁed heroes and villains who use violence as a justiﬁed means to solve problems.

‘Repeated exposure to rapidly paced, adrenaline-inducing action sequences and captivating special effects could reinforce beliefs, attitudes and impressions that habitual violence in social interactions is ‘ normal.’

More info: www.bit.ly/UniversityMontreal

How NOT to deal with tantrums

Although it is tempting for parents, research shows that using screens to calm upset children backﬁres in the long run because they never learn how to regulate their emotions.

The study is based on over four hundred children ages 3 to 5, who were monitored for six months for signs of emotional dysregulation such as temper tantrums, hyperactivity, sudden changes in mood or refusing to listen to their parents.

Those whose parents relied on smartphones and tablets to calm them down were more likely to have frequent emotional meltdowns, particularly if they were boys. Scientists said this was because children could become dependent on screens to distract them from negative emotions and never learn to manage their own feelings or self-soothe.

More info www.bit.ly/ToddlerTantrumResearch

Wallingford Museum: A Family Friendly Local History Museum

See, do and discover!

• Wallingford’s Saxon walls and royal castle

• Murder mystery links, including Midsomer Murders, and Agatha

Christie - ‘The Queen of Crime’

• The Wallingford Storya walk through time

• A Victorian Street Sceneto explore

• Amazing models, Wallingford Castle, Wallingford Bridge, Thames weirs and Wallingford Station

• Roman burials from Crowmarsh

• ‘Hands-on’ including much loved ‘smelly-feely’ drawers and archaeological digging in our ever popular sandpits

Exhibition for 2023

House Detectives: history behind the door, the houses in this exhibition have been chosen to reﬂect the changing development and use of houses in Wallingford, from the medieval period to the 20th century. (Including a ﬁctional fun mystery house.)

On your journey through the museum you will discover how we became house detectives and how you could become one to! www.wallingfordmuseum.org.uk