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We're delighted to share that we've written a guest blog for Happity - Find Baby & Toddler Classes. Meet other parents. The blog focuses on the incredible benefits of role play for your toddler's mental health. Here's the link to have a read: https://www.happity.co.uk/blog/article/role-play-benefits-for-toddlers-popupplayvillage/ About the Author Written by Becky Hoare Becky Hoare is a qualified primary school teacher, author, children’s role play specialist and founder of Pop Up Play Village, with over 18 years’ experience in education. She specialises in child led role play and its impact on children’s learning, development and emotional wellbeing. Find out more

Every year, Aldi's wooden toy sale creates a huge buzz amongst parents, grandparents, early years professionals and educators across the UK. Social media fills with excited posts, toy aisles become busier than usual, and families eagerly search for their favourite role play sets before they sell out. As a former primary school teacher, founder of Pop Up Play Village and author of Playing It Out: The Power of Role Play for Children's Mental Health, I find myself excited for a different reason. Whilst many see a toy sale, I see something much bigger. I see role play being brought

Playing It Out: The Story Behind the Book Publishing a book is something I never imagined I would do yet here I am, incredibly proud to be launching Playing It Out: The Power of Role Play for Children’s Mental Health. This book is more than a professional milestone. It’s a deeply personal reflection of my journey as an early years teacher, a parent and the creator of Pop Up Play Village. Where the Idea Began The ideas behind Playing It Out have been forming for many years. Long before the book existed, I saw first hand how role play

When children pretend, they’re doing far more than having fun. They’re building the foundations of learning, wellbeing, communication, and confidence. Role play is one of the most powerful, natural ways that children make sense of the world. At Pop Up Play Village, we see every day how stepping into a role whether a doctor, builder, shopkeeper, librarian or vet, it opens up endless opportunities for children to learn in meaningful, joyful ways. Here’s why role play deserves a central place within every early years and primary curriculum. Role Play Builds Language, Communication and Vocabulary When children are immersed in

Our children’s mental health is a priority. As parents and carers, we strive to have happy and healthy children and support them in any way we can. I don’t know about you but with so much going on in our children’s lives, it is often hard to know how best to support them especially when we aren’t with them all of the time and don’t always know what situations they have faced each day. My children are 8 and 10 years old now and this is what I particularly find difficult. They spend so much time at school and

Nurture and care is one of our 6 values that sits at the heart of everything that we do. We feel that it is vital that we look after our little visitors and their grown ups with nurture and care and also when children are playing, we want to encourage the development of these skills too. As this value has two key elements to it, I’m going to talk about each one separately and explain how we promote nurture and care here at Pop Up Play Village. Right from the booking process to arriving at our village until the