Little Wise Toys was born out of a wish to design and create a range of educational resources supporting different key life skills. I wanted to take things back to the old school style of learning - no screens, flashing lights or loud noises, yet plenty of opportunity for hands-on and engaging learning and exploring. I was also keen to provide resources that help parents and carers to support their children regardless of whether they have any expertise in the themed areas because the activity sets provide all of the relevant guidance.
The initial sets I created focus on 3-6 year olds and offer themed creative collage sets (e.g. dinosaurs and sea life) sitting alongside ideas of how they can be used for supporting early learning across the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1. I then created additional kits for 3-6 year olds focused on phonics, maths and emotional health. The range has recently expanded to include two toolkits for older children and young people (one for 6-12 year olds and one for teenagers) which also support emotional health and wellbeing.
Given the nature of the fantastic Everyone plus Everything project, I'd love to share more about the three emotional health and wellbeing toolkits. A wide range of audiences are using these toolkits including parents as well as other settings such as schools and counselling services.
Little Wise Box of Emotions
The Little Wise Box of Emotions offers an interactive and engaging way for children aged 3-6 to explore their emotions and feelings. It helps little ones learn about naming, understanding and managing their emotions and feelings. It also looks at supporting a range of other areas such as confidence, self-esteem and interpersonal skills. As well as an activity book full of ideas and a feelings poster, the kit comes with 28 magnetic tabs of different facial expressions and a magnetic board to provide an age appropriate and hands-on approach to learning.
Two Reframing Your Thoughts toolkits for 6-12 year olds and teenagers
The Reframing Your Thoughts toolkits provide children and young people with the knowledge, skills and tools that help them to understand and manage their thoughts, emotions and feelings and approach things in life in a way that promotes their confidence, happiness and resilience. The toolkits explore a wide range of big feelings and emotions as well as different life scenarios. Given the older audience, the teen toolkit also delves a little deeper into how the brain works and looks at additional areas such as exam pressures, worrying about the future, consent and friendships as young people begin to gain increasing independence while transitioning from a child to an adult. There is so much that parents and carers can do to support an empowering reframing approach to life. So, you'll find support and ideas for adults in both of the toolkits too.
Laying the foundations of emotional intelligence from a young age can bring so many invaluable benefits for years to come. I'm delighted that Little Wise Toys offers some helpful tools to help support this.
