Welcome to This Playful Home

I’m so honoured that you have stopped by.

Via this page, I share the benefits of intentional rhythms, a purposeful home environment and play-based pedagogy so that parents can raise their children with more joy and less overwhelm.

You’ll find no fluff and no hacks – just the genuine help you need to make life at home more joyful and less overwhelming.

What I believe...

• You don’t have to sacrifice all to be a ‘good mother’

• You don’t have to create Pinterest worthy crafts

• You don’t need to have a play space worthy of Instagram.

My work focuses on evidence-based parenting methods to help parents with young children to simplify their days at home.

Newsletter content covers a range of parenthood topics including the early years, education and current affairs.

How this Works

This Playful Home is published on a weekly basis. Articles on the homepage are free to all subscribers for two weeks - older posts are automatically paywalled after this.

Free subscribers receive:

• A copy of the ‘Good Morning Guide’

• Posts published on the homepage

In addition to weekly free content, I have published a paid series called ‘A Playful Year’ which is available to paid subscribers.

Core topics include: family rhythms, home environment and the importance of play.

New series are being planned for Autumn 2024, which include: How to Support your Child’s Learning from Home, An Introduction to Home-schooling and How to Raise a Reader.

Please message me if you have any questions about the course.

Why pay to support This Playful Home?

When you pay to subscribe, you are helping me to dedicate more time to my main mission: helping parents understand the importance of play in the early and middle years of childhood.

Whilst I love providing free content to everyone, unfortunately that alone does not pay the bills. The more people who pay to subscribe, the more time I can spend writing about the important topics that matter to you.

Paid Subscribers receive:

• Access to the ‘A Playful Year’ course - you can find the entire course index below. The course is available year-round and can be worked through at your own pace.

• Access to upcoming series and events - coming Autumn 2024

• Access to archived ‘This Playful Home’ posts (all free posts are archived after two weeks)

• Monthly calls and chats are being planned, but will depend on engagement - please let me know if this appeals to you!

Subscription costs are purposely low to make paid content more accessible. You can find out more by clicking the button below:

About Sian

I’m Siân Thomas, a qualified British primary school teacher, parent educator and founder of This Playful Home. I work with parents from all over the world through online courses, workshops and coaching.

Whilst I originally started out with a large following on Instagram, more recently I have navigated over to Substack and Pinterest where I’ve rediscovered my joy for sharing parenting content.

When I’m not writing content for this page, I work in the local community helping children with reading in writing. In the Autumn, I will also be launching an online literacy programme for home-schoolers.

When I find spare time, you’ll find me taking hundreds of photos of flowers and the local countryside on my daily walk or planning a read-aloud teatime session with the kids.

Look out soon for my brand new Substack newsletters Our Reading Rituals and My English Countryside Diary.