CHILDREN’S
INSTEAD OF THROWING
MICHAEL ROSEN’S BOOK OF PLAY
★★★★★
POET and performer, author of over a hundred books, including We’re Going On A Bear Hunt, and former children’s laureate, Michael Rosen advocates the importance of play for everyone, young and old.
The book accompanies an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London and has a friendly, lively tone as every aspect of play is explored: Role-play, dreaming, ad-libbing, dressing up and cosplay, toys, art, stories and wordplay.
The value of play for developing creativity and its therapeutic role is highlighted and the views of psychiatrists, philosophers and scientists are brought in to back this up.
One thing about the book that is not playful is the inclusion of illustrated activities, not always related to the chapters they find themselves in, that interrupt the reader mid-sentence at regular intervals.
HELPING to carve a scary face out of a pumpkin is a big part of the Halloween fun for kids. But most of them, and their parents, don’t give a thought about how much pumpkin flesh they’re wasting, and what could be done with it instead of just throwing it in the bin.
Every Halloween more than 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin is thrown away in the UK alone. But there are many ways of using the fruit (and yes, it is a fruit because it contains seeds, although it’s nutritionally more similar to a vegetable) and not just by eating it, despite its impressive nutritional credentials.
Childcare expert Deena Billings, head of quality at Busy Bees Childcare (busybeeschildcare. co.uk), which last year ensured more than 1,000 pumpkins were put to good use after Halloween, says: “Children love Halloween and pumpkins are always part of the fun, but it’s such a shame that so many go to waste each year.
“There are lots of ways to reduce how many we throw away and it doesn’t just have to be cooking with them. Showing children different ways to use their pumpkins after Halloween teaches them a really valuable lesson about reducing waste.”
Here, Deena uses her imagination and creativity to suggest eight ways children can use pumpkins after Halloween: