Archives August 2022

Although there is usually talk of learning to swim or swimming, this is not accurate since babies are too young to acquire swimming skills. However, they acquire greater psychomotor development, motor coordination, cardiothoracic and especially muscular strengthening. This will help them improve their balance when facing their first movements, such as crawling and walking.

We can say that swimming pool activities with children represent one of the best early stimulation methods that we have within our reach.

Benefits of Water and the Pool in Children

There are numerous purely physical effects that favor the development of the child from a very young age, such as balance, buoyancy, propulsion ability, or spontaneous movements that cause displacement, the swimming reflex, and splashing as a manifestation of pleasure with water.

But one of the most striking and most reminiscent of his period in the womb is the respiratory protection reflex, which consists in the fact that in the presence of water in the respiratory tract. The child activates a defense mechanism by which it closes the upper airways. This effect disappears between 7 and 8 months.

When to Start With the Pool Activity?

It is recommended not to start before the fourth month of life since babies have not yet finished maturing their immune systems. Despite this, in many cases, it begins around 6 weeks of life.

We must bear in mind that children develop a fear of water at a later age. So if we have familiarized them with water before then, we will avoid difficulties in their future learning to swim.

Precautions in Swimming Pool Activity

For this activity to be truly an enriching experience for children and parents. It is necessary that they take into account a series of precautions whenever they are in a pool or in any other aquatic environment with a child. Here we list the most outstanding:

• Whenever the baby is in the water, the adult must have it within their reach without neglecting a moment and never turn their back on the baby.
• Whenever an activity begins in the pool, the program must instruct parents about the maturational limitations of babies, especially about the risks of suffocation in the water. The maturational development to be able to swim will not be acquired until they are four years old.
• You have to be aware of possible hypothermia, checking that the water temperature is adequate for a young child. The recommended temperature is between 89.6 and 34º.
• Ensure that the facilities where the aquatic activity is to be carried out meet the hygiene and health conditions required by the health authorities, with chlorine treatments if possible salt.
• Carry out specific exercises at each stage, led by professionals who are experts in the field. Each baby has a rate of progress and it is the program that must adapt to it and not the other way around.

In short, activities for babies in the pool can be an excellent tool to achieve healthy and happy children since it favors the optimal development of many areas.

At The Vine Learning Center Pre-K in San Diego, one of San Diego’s Top Pre Kindergarten Centers, they encourage and participate in different extra-curricular activities for kids, including swimming.

When dressing for a mountain excursion, especially in winter, it is important to keep in mind our 3 enemies: cold, humidity and wind. Learning to dress in layers fighting against these three factors is essential, and for this, one of the great inventions in terms of clothing is the 3-layer theory.

Introduction to mountain clothing

When we carry out physical activity, more or less intense, the body’s temperature increases, since the combustion of energy produces heat. This is when the body begins to sweat (our natural cooling mechanism) to regulate its temperature. But sweat, in a cold place, can be our great enemy, as it can soak our clothes and lower our temperature too much, with the consequent risk of hypothermia. And we don’t want that.

Advantages of the 3 layer theory

What the 3-layer theory allows us is to evacuate sweat while maintaining our body temperature and protecting ourselves from rain and wind. In addition, we can take off or put on clothes (layers) depending on whether we are doing physical activity, resting, if it rains… and adapting to each moment to regulate our temperature. In addition, it will help us optimize the weight in our backpack, avoiding carrying extra clothes.

Cold tolerance

It should be noted that there are people who can stand the cold longer than others, depending on several factors:

• Metabolism: This can be more accelerated, “hotter”, or on the contrary, slower, “colder”.
• Body fat: The more body fat we have in the body, the more insulation we will have.
• Blood flow: If we experience cold in the trunk (priority area for being the vital organs), the body as a measure of survival response, will spend most of the blood flow to warm the important organs, therefore, the extremities of both the hands like the feet, they will go into the background and will be the coldest and most difficult parts to heat.
• Physical activity: If our state is stopped, the physiological machinery that allows us to be warm will be slowed down, if instead, we are in movement, the body will be increasing the basal metabolism, and therefore, burning more calories and heating the body.

Cotton, our great enemy

As we mentioned before, the main objective in the mountains is to wick away sweat and stay dry. That is why cotton is one of the most discouraged materials for hiking clothing. If we wear too many clothes while walking or simply if we move with a medium-high intensity, sweat will be inevitable. Cotton is usually cold and maintains moisture, meaning that as soon as we start to sweat, the garment will soak in, cool the sweat and not dry easily. 

That is why in the market we are going to find a lot of garments and materials that assure us of being breathable (which let out excess moisture caused by the heat of our body). That breathability is a common characteristic that we should look for in all the garments of our 3 layers.

Maintaining body temperature is not so complicated if we know how to properly choose the clothes and accessories that we wear. As they say in Norway: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.”

Kitchen tents are widely used both in long-stay caravanning and on routes with a motorhome or camper van. They are ideal for storing food and cooking protected from the wind. There are so many brands, sizes, materials and features, and we understand that it can be overwhelming when it comes to finding your ideal kitchen tent. For this reason, in this post we explain everything you should take into account when choosing your camping kitchen tent. 

Kitchen materials

Camping kitchen tents are usually made of PVC, but there are some cheaper models that use lighter materials and are less waterproof. Below we detail the reasons and differences.

All-Season and PVC materials

Most kitchen tents are made of PVC . It is a fabric with a waterproof and highly resistant PVC coating. It is a premium material that withstands inclement weather very well and can be washed very easily (we explain how on our blog).

Of course, it is not bulletproof, if you take good care of it, do regular cleaning, make sure it is dry when you fold it for storage and apply waterproofing from time to time, its useful life will be increased.

There are also kitchen tent models made with All-Season Polyester. It is characterized by its resistance to sunlight and most chemical products. It is a thermoplastic fiber, which prevents wrinkles from appearing and from changing its shape and design over time. 

Materials 2 seasons for summer

There are also more affordable and lighter kitchen tent models made with less waterproof materials than PVC or All-Season Polyester, more designed for the short summer season, or even for the route.

They are tents made of materials such as Polyester or Nylon Oxford. They are much lighter tents to transport, faster to set up and that perfectly fulfill the function of protecting from the elements while you prepare your camping meals.

However, these materials age less well when in prolonged contact with dust, UV rays or rain, and are less waterproof. They can also tear more easily when carrying a lot of weight, such as a bag of water or snow accumulated on the roof. 

In short, these materials are a very valid option if you want to spend little money and have the kitchen tent set up in summer during a short stay, or on a motorhome or camper route where you are going to set up and take down the tent several times. 

Kitchen tent size

Once you know if your kitchen tent is for long stays and prolonged use, it is time to decide what size you will need. Many times, the measurements of the kitchen will be conditioned by the size of the plot. We must take into account the space occupied by the caravan, the trailer, the awning or tent (if any) and see how much space we have left for the kitchen tent, checking that we do not have trees, streetlights and other elements that bother . 

Up to 2 meters

If the size available on your plot is very small, it is best to take a kitchen tent with a front of less than 2 meters. The smallest models usually start at 150 cm.

It is a fairly small space, but enough to store a kitchen cabinet, a refrigerator, and have room to cook comfortably inside.

2 to 3 meters

In this fork is where you will find the vast majority of kitchen stores in the market. With fronts of 200 to 300 cm, and depths ranging from 150 cm to 200 cm, you will have approximately 4 to 6 square meters of space.

With that, it is already enough for a kitchen cabinet or two, a fridge, a garbage can and a small round barbecue, and enough space in between to cook with a lot of freedom of movement, or with someone else, if you want to make fun recipes with the kids, for example.

More than 3 meters 

There are manufacturers that make custom-made kitchens with a front of up to 5 meters. They are authentic PVC palaces, or the equivalent of an independent trailer (without a caravan) with a rear wall. 

In these XL kitchen tents you will have plenty of space to store all your furniture and kitchen utensils, and at the same time have a storage corner for a couple of bikes, a large barbecue or other folding furniture such as sun loungers, for example.

We all like to enjoy nature, but not all of us are willing to sleep with insects, nailing us with a stone or root, without being able to charge our mobile or have a shower. Glamping was born to satisfy all those campers who seek to connect with nature without foregoing some of the luxuries and comforts of home.

What is Glamping

Glamping, or glamorous camping, is a type of camping that combines the experience of camping outdoors with the comforts and luxuries of the best hotels.

Glamping tents are usually spacious and large, designed to place a large bed or a table with chairs, for stays of several days where you can be as comfortable as possible.

In many cases, when the glamping tent is going to be set up for a long period of time, what is usually done is to set it up on a wooden platform separated from the ground, achieving greater insulation and giving the tent greater category and comfort with a level ground free of mud, stones, roots or insects.

Most common types of glamping accommodation

Pavilion and Safari Tents

This category includes Pavilion, Patrol, Jaima, Safari or similar tents. They are tents with much more robust and heavy metal structures than normal camping tents. In the case of the Safari tent, there are also some structures with wooden beams.

Pavilion-type tents have high walls with windows, and a gabled roof. Some have a fireproof window in the roof so that the chimney can be removed from the stove in the colder months.

Chalet and Trailer Tents

Chalet – type tents were used more in the past than they are today. They are very large cotton tents , very heavy, with several interior rooms, usually a living room, dining table or table for board games, and a couple of double bedrooms.

Due to its large size and weight, the market has pivoted towards a new chalet tent concept: the tent trailer. This trailer not only allows you to transport the bulky tent and have your trunk available for other items, but also facilitates the assembly of the tent, using the trailer itself as part of the structure of the tent.

Bell Tents and Emperor Tents

The bell tent concept evolved from Henry Hopkins’ 1858 design, which combines the Native American teepee design with these new low sidewalls, giving the tent its bell shape. It is more spacious interior and its new name: Bell (which means bell in English).

It is very similar to the Tipi tent, with a structure based on a tall pole in the center and a small compass-shaped pole for the door, but Bell tents for glamping have walls, which in the case of Tipi tents, does not happen

The fact that Bell glamping tents have walls means that the useful space is greater than in the case of Tipi tents, where the height around the entire perimeter is minimal and therefore cannot be used as much.

Tipi Tents

The concept of tipi tent refers to the tents that the indigenous Indians made by crossing sticks or masts and animal skins wrapped around them.

Tipi tents are widely used today for Glamping, and are often confused with Bell tents. The main difference is that the roof of teepee tents goes directly down to the ground , while bell tents have a small vertical wall that gives them that bell shape (hence their name).