Stowting Montessori Nursery

Toy Story 5 may have just delivered one of the clearest warnings about modern childhood. The villain isn’t a monster or a scary figure; it’s a tablet. This reflects a growing concern among parents and scientists: screens are quietly taking over the time, attention, and imagination that used to define childhood.

Today, kids spend 5 to 7 hours a day on devices. Free play, outdoor activity, and pretend games are shrinking. Screens provide instant images but remove problem-solving, reduce pretend-play, and collapse attention spans. The average toddler now expects new stimulation every 7 to 12 seconds; this isn’t curiosity, it’s overstimulation.

Hands-on toys and real-world play remain crucial. They build motor skills, spatial awareness, creativity, and problem-solving. Screens, no matter how interactive, cannot replace the three-dimensional, multi-sensory experiences that form strong brains.

Even the connection suffers. Eye contact, shared smiles, joint attention, and emotional mirroring are all critical for wiring the social and emotional brain. Screens often steal these moments without parents even noticing.

Disney’s message is bold but necessary: protecting childhood means prioritizing play, imagination, and human connection over glowing screens. It is a reminder that real childhood happens when hands, minds, and hearts are fully engaged.

Some really important issues to think about!

Kathy Hougaard-Lively - author
“As a child and adolescent therapist, I cringe when I see children in restaurants watching TV on their parents’ phones. Babies in grocery baskets are often engaged by I-pads instead of the sights and sounds around them. Teens in cars so rarely look out the windows while riding that they are afraid to drive because they don’t know how to get around in their own towns. We are stunting an entire generation.

By not allowing our kids to experience the slightest period of boredom, we deny them the chance to learn to self-soothe or to discover their own imagination. If my childhood best friend and I were inside playing video games, we never would have hollowed out the big bush in our backyard to make a clubhouse. We never would have dug up my parents’ garden with spoons looking for buried treasures. How sad that would be, because those are my favorite memories of my childhood.

“I find myself worrying most that when we hand our children phones, we steal their boredom from them. As a result, we are raising a generation of writers who will never start writing, artists who will never start doodling, young chefs who will never make a mess in their kitchen, athletes who will never kick a ball against the wall, musicians who will never pick up their dad’s guitar and start strumming.” (Glennon Doyle)

Instead, we will create another generation of socially stunted young adults who are depressed, physically unhealthy, and lacking motivation, imagination, and social skills.

Electronics serve a purpose but are being abused by parents and children alike. Please do your kids a favor and teach them to live in the moment. Sometimes, turn the electronics off.”

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We have been very busy exploring and caring for our environment.

This week we are thinking about school readiness!

The information this week is not intended to overwhelm you, but we wanted to give you ideas of things you can be thinking about at this time, and possibly supporting your child with.

Hear hear 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

CREDIT Donna Ashworth Words

We have been enjoying the sun this week, spending our days outside.

We are having a great time spending our mornings outside.

We are spending our mornings outside now and are looking for equipment to enhance our outdoor area, if anyone has a camping hammock that they no longer use, tarpaulins or child size wheelbarrows we would be most grateful.
We are also going to plant vegetable/flowers in pots so please bear us in mind if you have any extra plants or pots.

We try and give our children real life experiences so we use china plates at lunch time, we do get occasional breakages so would be grateful if you could remember us if you change your side plates as we are beginning to run a little low on spares.

Thankyou.

In twenty years time...
People will not ask the children of 2020 if they caught up with their studies.
They will not ask them what grades they made, despite the year off school.
They will ask them with wonder ‘what was it like?’
They will ask them ‘how did you cope?’
‘How did you feel?’
‘What do you remember of those days?”
They will listen in awe to the tales of clapping on doorsteps for the medical workers.
They will sit open-mouthed to hear of daily walks being the only life we saw and how much we missed human contact and gatherings.
They will be amazed to know about empty supermarkets, online concerts, birthdays spent on a screen and a life lived inside.

They will listen, then sit back with amazement and say, ‘Wow. You went through so much.’

So think about what you would like your children to take away from this whole year.
Tell them they are not behind.
Tell them they are not missing out.
Tell them they are extremely special indeed and they will be forever made stronger by this unique time.
Tell them catching up is not even a thing because they have grown so much in so many other ways.

Remind them too of the fun stuff, the family jigsaws, the window rainbows, the zoom bingo.
The feeling of safety and togetherness amidst the chaos.

Let them take that thought with them through life.
Change the narrative now and it will travel far.

Tell the children they are not behind.
They are special.

They are special.

Donna Ashworth

Author of History Will Remember: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BDWY9CP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabc_CDJ7HT21W7TT3ZGNN9D6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

And ‘to the women’ : https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08LRGWY74/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabt1_OYLVFbX4YR91V



Painting by Samantha Shirley