Our offices are now closed for the Christmas break, and will reopen on Tuesday 5th January 2010.

Please note that all orders placed by midnight on Sunday 20th December will be processed and shipped by First Class post on Monday 21st December. Orders placed after this date will be processed after our Christmas break.

We would like to wish all of our customers a very Merry Christmas!

After two years on the High Street at Newport, we have taken the decision to close THM Newport to allow us to concentrate fully on our online shop.

We would like to thank our customers from Shropshire (and further afield!) for the last two fantastic years!

We’re pleased to announce that the Moby D wrap sling and Ellaroo Lightly Padded Ring Sling are now available for sale in the THM online store! These are old favourites that we’re really happy to have back on our shelves.

The Moby D (£52 inc. free UK Delivery) has all of the benefits of the Moby Wrap, but with a little extra in the form of a gorgeous front panel. We currently have 5 beautiful designs in stock, more to follow very soon!

The Ellaroo Lightly Padded Ring Sling (£42 inc. free UK Delivery) is a really popular design which is now available in 4 of the gorgeous colourways from the Ellaroo Wraparound Baby Carrier range. We’ll have more designs available very soon.

And don’t forget that the standard Moby Wrap baby sling is on special offer until the end of this month - save 10% until 30/11/09!

Our Real Nappy Network listing page has been updated, with new contact details and some new events listed.

If you run a Real Nappy Network or Project, or have some real nappy events lined up, please email us and let us know about them.

The Cambridge Primary Review has recommended that formal education should not begin until children are 6 years old - instead the play-based learning of the Early Years Foundation Stage should be extended to the end of what is currently Year 1.

Predictably enough, the government has pooh-poohed this idea and says that it would be ‘completely counter-productive’ and that an early start to formal learning is a great benefit to the child. In doing so, they are completely ignoring the fact that across Europe, children don’t start formal learning until around 7, and that even in Wales and Northern Ireland the EYFS is being extended.

It has also recommended that SATS tests should be scrapped, and that children should be assessed across a broad range of subjects rather than the literacy and numeracy tests which are currently carried out, with the results being used to monitor the progress of the child rather than to place the school in a league table. The review does stop short of calling for a change in the age for compulsory education, but does say that open debate of this subject would be beneficial.

I completely agree with the Review on the subject of play-based learning. I think that it would benefit those children not ready for formal education at 4 or 5 years, while those who were keen to move onto more formal learning could be accommodated. As it stands, there is a lot of pressure on very small children to master skills which sometimes they just aren’t ready to grasp.

However I do think that a later start for compulsory education would also benefit some children - my eldest son was not ready for school when the Government deemed him ready and so I home-educated him until he was just over 6. At this point he started school able to read and write (which he’d learned at home in a relaxed atmosphere, because he wanted to do so) but without the stress which he was obviously feeling when we first tried him in Reception at 4 years and 9 months.

I do think that the Government should not write off this review, and should be willing to enter into reasonable discussions to create a more flexible education system which better addresses the needs of the child, rather than a ‘one size fits all’ system which only suits the average child (whatever one of those might be!)