I liked the cards so much, I bought the company.

I was won over the same way you might be. By watching my own children ask for the cards.

We still have some old decks lying around the house that never get used. It always felt like 'school work' to Abigail and Joshua.

My "aha" moment came with our youngest, Joshua, who had the phonics cards set up in the stand in our garden.

He was doing the S-A-T-P-I-N exercise. Those are the first sounds children learn at school.

It was a game recommended in the pack - "how many words can you spell in 60 seconds?" He just kept going and going!

Once you see your child lean in like that, you never go back.

The ideas and designs aren't overcomplicated, they're just exceptionally well-designed, clean, and unfussy with a real purpose.

And the cards are bigger than the ones we'd tried. Sturdier, and designed with longevity in mind.

It sounds like a small difference, but it's those little touches that make a child pick up the cards.

That's the way most good things for children start.

Kate, the founder, would practice counting with Billy (whilst Lara was napping). She'd write down the numbers and dots on a separate piece of paper for him to match up. However, he always wanted to count higher than 10, and play with more numbers. The scraps of paper she'd written on soon became bent and torn.

There wasn't anything on the market that went higher than 10 or 20, whilst also being really simple. So she made our first product, Learn by Doing… Numbers. She designed it herself — clean black and white cards, no clutter, nothing to distract from the numbers.

Every product started as something Kate made for Billy and Lara. Numbers first. Phonics as they got a bit older. Then times tables. Then more subjects they were curious about. If it worked for her two, it went out to everyone else.

My Abigail and Joshua are exactly the same ages as Billy and Lara. No wonder these cards resonated! They were designed by someone one step ahead of me, for children the same age as mine.

I knew Kate and her husband Ollie through a mutual friend.

What I found was two honest, hard-working people who were properly proud of what they'd built, and rightly so.

They'd decided to sell — other full-time commitments had taken over — and they wanted the business to keep going well. That mattered to me more than any spreadsheet.

My own background is marketing. I could see straight away this brand just needed more parents to know it existed. You don't often get the chance to buy something that already works.

I live in Sussex, a 15-minute drive from Kate and Ollie.

The cards are still printed locally. So are the flashcard stands. I like that. It keeps everything within reach — I can see what's being made, hold it, and say no if it isn't right. 'Homely' is the word for it.

Everything else stays as it was, too. Paper from sustainable sources. Inks that are plant-based and from renewable sources. Even Kate's old shelves that stock the products!

Our cards are used in classrooms, by teachers who chose them for their own groups.

Like Victoria Tso (Primary School Teacher, and Mother of two boys) who likes to use the 'turn it into a game' philosophy in her classroom.

That was another tick for me. Before I'd bought anything, people who spend all day with 30 four-year-olds had already decided these worked.

Getting children off screens is a daily thing in our house, the same as it is in yours. Some days I win it. Some days I really don't.

I'm not going to tell you how to run that. All I'll say is that these cards are one of the few things in our house that my two will pick up on their own, without being asked. That was another tick.