LOVE WRITING COUPLE DESIGN CHILD-FRIENDLY CREATIVE WRITING PRODUCTS TO MAKE LEARNING FUN AND EASY

The entrepreneurs behind The Love Writing Co, are on a mission to help children love writing right from the start of their educational journey.

Co-founders, Surlender Pendress and Mark Sherwood, both had a passion to help children with their learning journey, so they started their business at the end of February 2019 and launched it via e-commerce in August 2019. 

They met when Surlender signed up to the NatWest Accelerator programme, where Mark was a mentor. He explained to Surlender how he had struggled with dyslexia as a child and Surlender confided how she had struggled to get her children to enjoy writing and thought that there was nothing she could do to help them. She had also seen that her nieces and nephews had the same struggles as her own children with learning to write and knew that there had to be a logical way to make this fundamental skill easier for children.

Surlender and Mark put a lot of time, effort and research into finding out what issues prevented children from enjoying writing, and they found that children were using products that simply did not fit their little hands – they were not the correct diameter, length or quality to create balance and a comfortable grip.

Children also got really frustrated with writing as it was boring for them and needed to be much more fun. There seemed to be nothing on the market that provided age-appropriate writing products as well as fun activity books. Both Surlender and Mark knew that children needed to be interested and inspired to encourage them to write.

Surlender is used to being around children as she was the eldest of six children, has two grown up children of her own and a three month old grandchild. She has noticed through her own experience growing up and bringing up her son and daughter that, with the digital era, children are simply losing the art of learning to write. 

She said: “Good writers make good readers and spellers, so why was there nothing to help them learn to write more easily and in a fun way? We don’t give a four year old child an adult-sized bike to learn to ride, so why give them adult-sized pencils or books that are simply not fun or engaging?”

So Surlender and Mark designed products specifically to overcome these issues and enlisted the children of friends and family to test them. Branding and samples were organised within three months and the initial studies showed 95% of the children that used these innovative products had better writing skills even after their first use. 

The Love Writing Co’s latest new product is a set of washable arty crayons that have a twist-barrel style, a smooth easy glide across the paper, are non-toxic, washable and come in 12 vivid colours. They are perfect for the early learners from three years of age up to nine and have 3-in-1 creative uses – they are a crayon, watercolour and pastel.

All the products in The Love Writing Co range are designed to inspire and make a difference to children. It is estimated that the young ‘Covid’ children of 2020 and 2021 are as much as 22 months behind in their education and these products are perfect for home teaching, nurseries, playgroups, pre-schools and schools to help parents and teachers support the learning process so children can catch up and even get ahead.

Highly recommended for Special Educational Needs departments and endorsed by the British Dyslexia Association, the new arty washable crayons as well as the other products such as the handwriting and alphabet practice books, writing and colouring pencil bundles, and handwriting practice traceable birthday and thank you cards support independence, encourage confidence, creativity and writing, and are designed to fit children’s little hands for a comfortable grip. Plus they are all made using premium responsibly sourced resources. 

“When my children started their own learning journey,” said Mark, “I realised that I wanted to do something to help my kids – and all kids – to love writing, so here I am doing something about it!” Surlender agreed and said: “I want to support children from all backgrounds and enable them to have access to our resources and other resources that help children learn to write and make the learning-to-write journey easier, quicker and fun. Learning to write is a fundamental learning block of education and, very often, good writers make good readers and spellers, so our mission at The Love Writing Co is to get kids writing and really loving it too.”

The Love Writing Co is based in Dudley and more information can be found here https://lovewritingco.com