We’ve very happy to report that we’ve recently been awarded funding worth £75,000 to help families and children in the area.

Children in Need has given us £10,000 a year for the next three years to continue our outdoor play project at Pulley Park in Bulwell.

Plus we’ve been given £10,000 by Boots Charitable Trust; £6,250 from The Jones 1986 Charitable Trust and £4,000 from the Ella Kirk Charitable Foundation – all of which are based in Nottingham.

The money will help us continue providing services to families and children including our play sessions for 0 to 13 year olds.

We’ve also been awarded £25,000 from a London-based charitable trust that would like to remain anonymous. The money will fund our Language Through Toys and Play project, which works with families one-to-one (at home) to encourage speech and language skills in children who are late talking, or have mild speech and language difficulties.

Many thanks to all our funders for your generous support.

Here’s the press release with all the details

We’re currently running free training sessions for childminders and other out-of-school childcare workers so you can find out more about play – including ideas for playing outdoors this summer.

Click here for details of training sessions coming soon

We’ve made a few changes to our play sessions recently – feel free to get in touch if there’s anything you’d like to check before coming along to a session.

Click here for details of play sessions for 0 to 5 year olds

Click here for details of play sessions for 5 to 13 year olds

The Nottingham Evening Post featured a story about our free play training for childminders and other out of school childcare practitioners on Thursday 19th April.

Read the story in full

Click here for more details of the training available

In partnership with Nottingham City Council’s Early Years Team, we’re running eight free training sessions for Nottingham City-based childminders and out of school childcare practitioners.

We’ve been commissioned to run the training sessions by Nottingham City Council – to extend practitioners’ knowledge and understanding of play, including natural and outdoor play.

The training sessions will also explore how childcare practitioners can make play more accessible to children from Nottingham’s diverse ethnic and cultural communities and for children with physical and learning disabilities.

All the sessions have been designed around the Department of Education’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, a statutory national framework that sets the standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to five.

The training sessions include:

Play Today, Gone Tomorrow on Saturday 21st April at Friends Meeting House, 25 Clarendon Street, Nottingham, NG1 5JD from 10am to 2.30pm – a look at why children’s play is on the decline and how child practitioners can help to reverse this trend. A fun, hands-on introduction to play.

Leaves, Trees And Dirty Knees on Saturday 5th May at St Ann’s Allotments Community Orchard, Ransom Road, St Ann’s, Nottingham, NG3 3LJ from 10am to 1pm – creative outdoor play ideas to awaken children’s zest for nature. Including simple, innovative ways to use the nature all around us, from a walk in the woods to play in the back garden.

Let’s Get Messy on Saturday 19th May at Mansfield Road Baptist Church Hall, corner of Gregory Boulevard and Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, NG7 6JN from 10am to 2.30pm – creative play ideas to develop children’s curiousity, innovation and imagination including how to use natural materials for arts and crafts. No creative experience necessary.

Nature’s Playground on Saturday 2nd June at St Ann’s Allotments Community Orchard, Ransom Road, St Ann’s, Nottingham, NG3 3LJ from 10am to 1pm – how to make outdoor play fun and stimulating for young children. Includes ideas for using natural resources like sand and soil and natural arts and crafts activities.

Diversity…It’s More Than Festivals on Saturday 16th June at Friends Meeting House, 25 Clarendon Street, Nottingham, NG1 5JD from 10am to 2.30pm – how to use play to broaden diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness and boost children’s sense of themselves and the world around them. Includes an introduction to the wide range of play materials, toys and positive imagery available.

Spinning A Yarn on Saturday 30th June at Bulwell Hall Park Woods, Norwich Gardens, Bulwell, Nottingham, NG6 8LF from 10am to 1pm – fantastic ideas for story time. Step into a woodland adventure and learn how to use the outdoors to breathe new life into those old favourite stories and fables.

Visit The World In A Day on Saturday 14th July at Mansfield Road Baptist Church Hall, Gregory Boulevard/Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, NG7 6JN from 10am to 2.30pm – a whistle stop tour of exciting cultural celebrations, events, art and creativity around the world. Includes simple ideas for creative projects and how to plan a rich programme of activities to help children explore and discover the diverse cultures around them.

Come On Light My Fire on Saturday 21st July at Bulwell Hall Park Woods, Norwich Gardens, Bulwell, Nottingham, NG6 8LF from 10am to 1pm – how to bring a sense of wonder, adventure and managed risk to children’s play. The tendency to wrap children in cotton wool is depriving them of simple childhood pleasures like tree climbing and cooking on an open fire. Find out how you can help reverse this trend!

To find out more about any of the sessions please call Steve Parkinson on 0115 975 3898 or email steve@toy-library.co.uk

We have a stall on Bulwell Market today – where we’re selling second-hand toys and fantastic activity packs – just the thing to keep your family entertained during the Easter holidays!

We’re also asking people for their views on a new service we’re planning – involving the toy library running children’s parties on behalf of parents.

Why not come down and say hello?

We’ve produced a new leaflet outlining our services to help people find out more about the toy library.

Click here to take a sneak peek!

It’s a flip-up leaflet which is why the back page appears to be upside down!

We’ll have printed copies back from the printer very soon so please get in touch if you’d like some or can help us to promote our services.

Many thanks!

We’re running eight free training sessions for childminders and out of school childcare practitioners.

The first training session starts in April and you’re welcome to attend any sessions that interest you, you don’t have to do all eight!

Childminders and out of school childcare practitioners don’t get access to this kind of training and support very often so we really hope you can come along.

All the training sessions are on Saturdays and are designed to help you boost your skills and knowledge of play, including natural and outdoor play.

You’ll be able to pick up loads of useful ideas for great play activities for example, whilst having fun yourself!

All the sessions are designed around the Department of Education’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, which sets the standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to five.

Sessions will include all kinds of creative, adventurous activities and there won’t be a dull moment we promise!

Click here for full details of each session

Click here to download a booking form

Feel free to get in touch with us if you’d like to know more!

Interesting article in the Telegraph about how gardening can help children with special needs:

Read the article in full

Calling all voluntary organisations and community projects!

Do you need an integrated monitoring database? We did…

Like many other community organisations we offer many different services to children, young people and families; run them in a variety of settings; provide monitoring information to a range of different funders who all want different information at different times…and are working flat out with limited time and resources.

Over the years we developed different monitoring systems for different projects as the need arose and in response to the needs of the funders at that time. This was as well as a computerised toy lending database. We ended up with a mixture of paper based and computerised systems which worked reasonably well separately but couldn’t give an overall picture of our organisation as a whole. It also meant that we couldn’t follow our users as they grew up and moved between our different projects.

We knew we needed to change this when we tried to demonstrate to a funder that we are offering an integrated service to children and families that supports them over years and through various life transitions. The only way to track our members was through the memories of our staff, which are good but not infallible.

That’s when we looked around at various off the shelf database options to combine everything we wanted…. and didn’t find anything. It just so happened that we had called a local computer company to help us rationalise our computer use and make our wireless internet work.

I asked their advice and discovered that they specialise in creating bespoke database systems for a wide variety of commercial users.

We have now purchased an all singing, dancing system that holds all of our membership information, session attendance and toy loans. It can make connections between people and families, track development and report on a huge range of variables. It can be accessed wirelessly by staff from their own computer to avoid a queue. It will even send a text message to members to wish them a happy birthday!

The real beauty of this system is that it is flexible and adaptable. They can mould it to specific projects by adding in different functions to suit needs.

If you think this database could work for your project in the way that it is for us, feel free to contact me (steve@toy-library.co.uk) and I’d be happy to discuss it with you.