About Us
About me - Holly
I am a mother of two children aged 1 and 3 and I am very lucky to live in the wonderful county of Derbyshire.
I have a degree in Psychology where I majored in educational and developmental psychology and then spent 12 years working for the NHS as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist ( CBT) guiding people to explore ways of helping themselves to manage their mental health and emotional wellbeing. I also have a particular interest in horticultural therapies and achieved level 2 RHS in horticulture as I believe that the outdoors and growing allows individuals to explore and luxuriate in all the wonderful emotional and sensory experiences of the outdoors. I believe that by indulging the senses and caring for instance for a plant or a young seedling not only we delve into the richness of our senses but I believe we also can begin a journey to ensuring that we nurture and look after ourselves.
As a mother of 2 and a someone who wants to ensure a healthy planet for future generations myself and my partner are very conscious of reducing the impact we have upon our environment. And this started with trying to recycle more and use sustainable materials and thus began our battle in trying to reduce plastic and especially single use plastics which are polluting our environment and ruining our planet!
Following us working hard to reduce single use plastics within our household items I started to think about my children's toys and their worlds, especially as at the time my first baby had just been born. And I thought about what I wanted her to experience and feel and I began to really realise the importance of allowing little people to explore the world and the textures, the sights, the sounds, the tastes and the smells and not just to see and feel the shiny plastic toys they had placed in front of them. And this began the seed of thought about the “ zero plastic sensory basket”. And a desire to ensure the use of materials that were either sustainable, recyclable, reusable and had no plastic content. As I also have a huge respect for all human beings and fairness and equality all items that we source are fair trade.
Hollyandjoe.co.uk was born out of out passion for a “real” and not plastic world and reducing our use of plastics and allowing our little people to begin their adventure in the world from a standpoint of understanding their natural materials through their inherent senses.
I am also a advocate of heuristic play in which little people explore and learn from objects in the real world. Guiding your little one to explore their senses and allowing them to learn for themselves rather than them being told what to do. I believe it also instills a sense of inner confidence in their own abilities to be able to do things and helps with the development of both confidence and competence with their own abilities.
To sense and discover themselves, the world and their place within the world. To begin this journey with my own children has been a joy and a privilege and seeing this part of the journey encouraged by the sensory baskets has allowed me to understand the importance in their development.
About Me - Joe
Music has always been a big part of my life, from learning my first instrument aged 8 to studying music at university and embarking on a music career. I have had the privilege of playing with many talented musicians across the UK and Europe and I have been able to witness and feel first hand the power of music and sound upon the human senses. I have also trained and worked as a music youth worker where again I was able to share and guide young people to explore their sense of sound and music. Watching young people enjoy and learn through their exploration with sound and music is such a joy and knowing the benefits it will being them in life such as creativity, emotional release and enjoyment has been a honour to observe.
I now have my own children and I am beginning to guide and impart my own passion for music and sound to them and the pleasure I have in watching them explore a sense of sound and music is immense. And knowing that through the use of our music sensory baskets that all children can tap into the wonders of music and sound and feel the physical and psychological benefits that engaging with sound and music can have.
The research and implementation of these baskets has been an incredibly enjoyable journey for myself and has allowed me to revisit my passion for music and also recall my journey with music and sound from when I was a child.
I hope you enjoy the sensory baskets and the music baskets as much as I have enjoyed making them and exploring them with my own little people,
About us - Holly & Joe
Where do we start, we have been together 18 years! we met shortly before we started university and have pretty much grown up together. Through all life's twists and turns we have stayed united. We then married and have been married 8 years.
How to describe us " we are like carrots and peas" very different creations that go together perfectly. However, one thing that we are always united on is how much we love our children and how we raised them, combined with our passion for protecting world and our environment, this has led to the creation and development of hollyandjoe.co.uk.
We are so excited and passionate about our little family business and we hope you enjoy our products as much as we have enjoyed putting them together.
Thank you for supporting our journey, our family and our dreams, any questions or queries or comments please get in touch we welcome your views!
