If I am honest I am not particularly fond of the sun. 9 years ago I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my forehead, I had a 6 week old baby and was pretty terrified, especially after a number of consultants expressed complete shock that I had a BCC at the tender age of 27. In my younger years I was not particularly careful in the sun, but I’ve never used a sun bed or lived abroad, I didn’t fit the typical BCC criteria at all. For many years I pretty much hid when the sun was out, and couldn’t bear the thought of a hot holiday.
More recently I have braved the the sunshine and found many ways to keep myself safe in the sun, while still enjoying a hot holiday with my family. I seek shade where possible, I wear sun protectant T-shirts when swimming, sunglasses at all times and a hat as well as factor 50 sun cream. I am also especially careful with all my children who have been well educated about sun safety. In some ways I am now glad my scary at the time experience happened, as it has made me very aware of the dangers of the sun, I was probably little too blasé before.
I asked my 9 year old earlier today why we wear sun cream and he said.
To stop us getting sun burned, which makes your skin red and blister, it also makes us less likely to get skin cancer.
Don’t forget to please buy me a stick as the cream goes in my eyes.
My 5 year old said
It stops our skin turning black and sore.
Boots Soltan kindly sent us a great selection of sun creams ( I am a big fan of their 3 hour water play cream ), some UV activated paint and a blog stencil. The paint is amazing and comes up so bright in the sunshine.
Our stencil didn’t work brilliantly thanks to shadows, but we had a great time playing with it anyway.
We cut out some shapes and placed them over the paint to make pictures and experimented by covering the paint with different materials to see if they blocked out the UV light. You can see that black card was very effective and transparent plastic not effective at all.
My children like most don’t really enjoy having suncream applied, so I was very pleased to discover some great resources from Boots Soltan including lots of fun and interesting information, games and activities to help children learn about sun safety. We especially like the idea of the human sundial. We’d definitely recommend you taking a look.
Keep an eye out on Science Sparks later this week to see more of our experiments with the UV activated paint.
Boots Soltan kindly sent us some sun creams, UV activated paint and a lovely blog stencil
These resources look really good, especially the paint, which I’d never heard of. I’m sorry to hear about your scare a few years back – glad all is well now.
I love the UV paint. It is very, very clever. I am very sun aware as I am so sun sensitive. I have had to switch to paraben-free stuff though.
We’re a Factor 50+ family here as we all burn so easily – we have sun tan lotion on frequently through the Summer x x
It is so scary isn’t it. I had a couple removed from my back despite religiously using suncream, although I did get badly burned as a child. Suncream is applied before the kids leave the house now
Oh that is really clever!
Love the UV paint. We find Soltan prodcuts to be good value aned effective.
I swear by Soltan for both me and the kids. Perfect my sensitive skin x
Oooh the paints a brilliant one
We’ve only ever used soltan as both their UVA and UVB protection are high and I love that you can get so many different sizes and types. Mine take the solid sticks to use in school