Springland Nursery in Colchester ordered a StoryPhones system as part of the Every Child a Talker Project (ECAT). We asked Team Leader and ECAT coordinator for the nursery, Sarah Duffield, if she would tell us how the children reacted when their StoryPhones system arrived at the nursery. This is what Sarah said:

“Springlands Nursery is new to using StoryPhones. We were given ours through the ECAT project and I as the ECAT co-coordinator was very excited to receive a new piece of equipment. The children were very interested to discover what the box contained and there was lots of smiles and excitement as the contents were revealed. The children eagerly tried on the Headsets and started to walk around wearing them finding out what they could do with them.  We as a Nursery have many ideas for developing the ways we use StoryPhones and look forward to many years of our children benefiting from this valuable resource.”

Springlands Nursery and has twice been judged outstanding by Ofsted. They have also developed a software package for assessment, planning and recording called Easysolution 4 Nursery Education. If you would like to find out more about this, then please click here.

We are looking forward to hearing all about the different ways the staff and children at Springlands Nursery are using their StoryPhones system.

If you know what a Beat Baby® is then you will know how excited we are that Lawrence Educational have made their Christmas Beat Baby Raps and the Snowflake Beat Baby Story available to download in BookShelf, the StoryPhones download store.

If you’ve never come across a Beat Baby® before, they are delightful creatures created by Ros Bayley, the renowned Early Years Consultant and story teller, to help children develop a sense of rhythm, rhyme and steady beat. Beat Baby® is a wonderful creature,  she curls up in a ball and can be woken up by the children’s singing. Ros has written hundreds of raps to accompany Beat Baby activities and children are captivated by Beat Baby and motivated to join in with music and singing sessions.

Christmas Beat Baby® Raps

These raps have been especially written to help celebrate Christmas with Beat Baby. The 16 raps include action raps, raps for dancing to and raps that can be listened to.  There are also raps for counting and a rap to be performed with rhythm sticks.

Buy the Rap Book Too!

Not only can you download the Christmas Beat Baby Raps, but you can now buy the accompanying books for only £4.00 including delivery costs.

Snowflake Beat Baby®

Snowflake Beat Baby lives with a lovely family and she is as white as snow.  She is very happy except for one thing – she has never played in snow and she wishes every winter that she will be able to, and then – one magical night – her dream comes true! Children can listen to her story told by Ros Bayley and join her as she enjoys her incredible adventure on a snowy night.

Order a Snowflake Beat Baby®!

You can now order a Snowflake Beat Baby via our download store. The Snowflake set contains the Snowflake Beat Baby and the MP3 download of the story all for £9.00 including delivery.

More New Raps From Ros Bayley

Over the next few weeks we will be adding more Beat Baby and Rap titles by Ros Bayley, including Monkey Raps, Animal Raps and a set of Sound Walk Raps ideal for supporting Letters and Sounds Phase 1.

Free Resources From Lawrence Educational

If you would like to know more about Beat Babies, steady beat and rhythm and rhyming activites you can visit Lawrence Educational’s website and download free information sheets and article written by Ros Bayley. If you like to do this, then please click here.

Have  a Happy Beat Baby Christmas!

Our distributer in the Netherlands, Heutink is hosting a seminar day at Apeldoorn for 600 teachers. Along side the seminars and talks, the Dutch teachers have the opportunity to attend an exhibition of products available from Heutink’s catalogue. Storyphones has received a wonderful response from all of the dutch teachers. They were very impressed that there were ‘no wires to chew’ and thought the whole concept was amazing. It’s been very interesting to meet teachers from a different country and to find out about their approach to education. It seems that everyone’s concerns are similar regardless of which country you teach in and speaking and listening skills are definately high on the agenda.