Mister Maker Comes To Town!

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The Boy has always loved doing craft, and rightly so. I'm a crafty sew and sew, and love making things, so it's only natural that he should. It's good for him as he develops his hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills through crafting, there's sensory development in there, pre-writing skills, pre-maths skills, as well as being plain, old-fashioned fun!

The only problem is that, like many households all over the land, I am ending up with small bags and tubs of craft equipment littering the house. The piano top has a pile of paintings etc. alongside cellophane bags of googly eyes and pompoms. I need it to be more organised!

Which is when I remembered what one of the mums in my toddler group said about a year ago at a coffee session. She'd made some Mister Maker drawers. So, thanks to Crafty-Hands-On Mum, we popped to Ikea this weekend and invested in some small wooden drawers, paint and varnish. Incidentally, their children's paint is excellent because it's the only one I've come across that doesn't stain our hands, including the red or blue!

Here's our Mister Maker drawers in a simple photo story:

And here are our Mister Maker drawers, all small bits and pieces neatly organised in a fun, cheap and crafty way!

What do you think?

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PlayMobil Grande Mansion (A TRU Review)

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And so to the final Toys R Us review from us as 2011 Toyologists. I might have a little sniff once I've pressed publish!

Please excuse the length, but this is a big and expensive item worthy of a detailed review. We're very lucky to have been sent the PlayMobil Grande Mansion and the seven room sets to furnish it.

The PlayMobil Grande Mansion is designed like a French large townhouse on three levels (additional floors are available to buy). There is an exterior to the house with steps leading up to the front doors, an opening postbox, a working doorbell, balconies on each floor (I haven't attached the hanging flowers as this toy is intended for 4years+ and The Boy is 2), windows and shutters. On the inside of the house is a spiral staircase connecting the three floors together.

Constructing the house took a while: there are many different sections, plugs to join walls and floors together, similar parts and fiddly bits. However, I was making this with The Boy present who was desperate to get to grips with it. It took me two hours (eight episodes of Poppy Cat and three of Peppa Pig) to finish it, so I would recommend making this before giving it to your child!

As a child, I always wanted a playhouse, and my dad once made me a wooden Barbie house for my birthday. This is no Barbie house, this is the next generation of playhouses and being PlayMobil it is most definitely unisex. I even had a discussion on twitter (more of that later) as to whether people thought that a playhouse was exclusively a girls' toy, and the general consensus was a resounding no!

The Boy absolutely adores his house, it is without a shadow of a doubt, the one toy that he plays with every single day for a sustained period of time. For the first week, he literally played with nothing else and I have had to bribe him away at times to play with the other toys in order to review them. The learning opportunities and possibilities to develop his understanding of the world around him are extensive, and his imagination has developed no end in the last month since it arrived.

There are seven room sets which can be bought to furnish the Grande Mansion, and (nearly) all of them are excellent quality and value for money. The accessories included are really detailed and comprehensive. However, if you wanted to build up the collection of rooms slowly and when finances allowed there are one or two that you could leave out initially.

PlayMobil Kitchen (£19.99)

This room is essential and one of the best value room sets. With a fridge-freezer, cooker, dishwasher, sink and extra opening cupboards it's really detailed. There is also a 'breakfast bar', two chairs and a highchair, coffee machine, plant, crockery and  cutlery, tins and packets of food, a dog, a dog's bowl, a nana and a baby. There's even a chicken to roast in the oven! The Boy is forever acting out the grown-ups cooking tea and loading the dishwasher afterwards, although the fact that the adults only ever cook pizza is slightly telling! This is a must room-set, although it has a lot of little pieces which could get easily lost. For safety, I haven't given them to The Boy yet.

Something to note is that the cupboards don't attach to the wall and move easily. I've used double-sided tape to fix them to the walls. I can cope with them now!

PlayMobil Dining Room (£9.99)

The dining room is one of the rooms that you could come to last, if at all. To be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure what it adds that isn't covered by the kitchen. There is a table and four chairs (the kitchen set has a breakfast bar and two chairs), four ice-cream sundaes and spoons (food is provided in the kitchen set), a plant (?!), a jug and four mugs, and a male adult figure. The space allocated for it in the house isn't huge and is also right at the bottom of the staircase, so it's a little crowded. It's difficult for The Boy to sit the figures on the chairs and tuck them under without him knocking off the other people, and the food bits are too small for him to play with at the moment.

PlayMobil Living Room (£17.99)

This is essential to have in the house, and is good value for money. The set comes with a three-seater sofa, an armchair, a television, a tv stand with opening cupboards, a dvd player, cd player and video (which I've fixed into place with double-sided tape), two plants, a vase of flowers, a coffee table, a fire which glows when the button is pressed (also fixed to the wall), a cat and basket, a grandad (looks just like The Boy's grandad), a caraffe and a glass. At the moment, The Boy is too young to be able to handle the caraffe, glass, vase of flowers and small plant, so I've put them away. A really good set which I'd recommend.

PlayMobil Parents' Bedroom (£15.99)

At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking there's not much in this room set considering the price, but the two bedside lights light up and that makes it completely worth the money! There's also a wardrobe with opening doors and a drawer, a vanity table with a turning mirror and chair, an alarm clock, and a mummy (that look a bit like me, although I'd love her eyelashes!). The Boy is captivated with the working LED lights and puts the mummy and daddy to bed at night. A perfect set, although mildly annoying that the mummy can't lay flat on her back due to her ponytail sticking out.

PlayMobil Children's Room (£19.99)

An essential room to buy but full of tiny pieces that are fiddly and unsuitable for under the recommended four years of age due to chocking hazards. You can't fault this room for value for money though as there is so much in it. The two children's beds can be kept separate as twin beds or stacked on top of each other as bunk beds, which is what I've done. Even better is that there are dips in the mattresses for the two provided children to lie down properly. There is a wall shelf, a high drawer unit, a table and chair, an underbed box, a guinea pig cage with two guinea pigs, a farm set with tiny figures, a boat, a fortress, musical instruments and a teddy. There is so much in this room, you can't not get it. Be warned though, the farm pieces are incredibly small and I see them getting lost very easily.

Playmobil Nursery (£11.99)

This is one of those rooms that you could come to towards the end of building the room sets up. In the set is a cot with canopy (pink, how sexist! I've removed the canopy), a changing table with opening doors, a mobile to fit on the change table (although I've put it above the cot), a dad, a baby, a plant (they're obsessed with flora), various bottles and potions to 'help' with changing the baby's bottom, a few toys and a potty. The potty is the smallest piece which I'm happy to have out (although we've temporarily misplaced it) and The Boy loves it because of his potty training journey in the Summer. Unfortunately, the baby provided is also another girl baby (like the one in the kitchen), so I've had to buy a boy baby in order to have a The Boy in the house.

PlayMobil Bathroom (£17.99)

This one's brilliant! I'd highly recommend this one's bought because of the value for money. Provided in the set is a toilet with moving lid, a bath with overhead shower (which detaches), an opening wall cupboard with mirror, a sink with an opening cupboard underneath, a chair, a plant (another one!), a towel, a female figure with underwear on and a plastic wrap around towel, and various tiny toiletry bits. The Boy is constantly giving the figures a bath and then drying them with the towel, or sitting them on the toilet and pretending to use the toilet paper. A definite must!

Taking into account the price of the house (£99.99) and the cost of the room-sets, all in all this amounts to what seems like an expensive toy. However it is worth it. It's aimed at 4-10year olds and I can see The Boy playing with this for years to come. Already it is his favourite toy and he has played with it every day for the past five weeks. Break that down into cost per day over the years it is used, and all of a sudden it is an investment for the future.

Would I recommend this?

Without a moment's hesitation.

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We were provided with these toys for the purpose of the review. Our opinion is honest and unbiased. Now where's the tissues? 

Choo-Choo: A Train Set Review

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A few months ago I contemplated getting The Boy started on a wooden train set. When I was a nursery nurse working with the two-three year olds, I used to love setting up elaborate layouts for them before they came in every morning, even if the little blighters did destroy it within five minutes. I mentioned to Tracey from London Toy Co. that I was wondering if this was the next step forward for The Boy with his toys, and out of the blue she very kindly sent me this:

Which I think you'll agree was rather kind of her, and The Boy was chuffed as well!

The large wooden railway set has 100 pieces in its sturdy carry-case. I can hear some of you squealing; I'm not sure if it's delight or dread at the amount. But for us, that's 100 pieces of fun and imagination. Not all of the pieces are train track, there are a lot of other items to make a 'town' like: a bus, trees, church, people, cars, train, houses etc. The attention to detail in the variety of accessories really allows for the imagination to develop: The Boy was 'brumming' the cars under the bridge and around the houses within minutes. He also built a little house up and then parked one of the cute cars outside.

The track pieces are obviously designed to fit with other compatible sets, which is incredibly useful. All of the pieces included in the box make the cover illustration and I created it within a few minutes. He loves having a bridge to drive the trains over and cars under.

This is a brilliant starter set with such a wide variety of pieces included that it is hard to fault it; it's such good value for money. However I would like to point out one or two tips for ease of use:

  • in the left picture above you can see that the bridge piece rests on two supports, however it can easily slide off the supports demolishing the bridge. We've fixed this by gluing the bridge unit to the supports.
  • the tracks have a variety of junction pieces in them (which is really hard to come across and ever so useful) but most of the normal track pieces are curved. There are only a handful of straight pieces which makes it difficult to come up with another layout.

Combine this starter set with a few more straight pieces and it is perfect for keeping pre-schoolers entertained for hours on end! We love the inclusion of the road vehicles and buildings.

The Large Wooden Railway Set is available from London Toy Co. for £54.99

We were sent this item for the purpose of this review. My opinion is honest and unbiased.

The Tent of Imagination

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When I was a tiddler I used to love making dens, and I was incredibly lucky because our house and bedrooms were big enough that my mum would keep them up for a day or so. I even used to make dens with the sheets on the whirly-gig washing line! Ever since I've had The Boy I have been looking forward to making dens for him, but he didn't particularly appreciate them at five weeks old for some strange reason. I've tried various times since, but not in the last few months.

Therefore when a 'ready-made' den arrived for him, I was hoping that he'd love it as much as I already did!

I didn't need to worry! He knew instantly that it was a tent, and loved the fact that it was a wigwam.

Standing at just over 6 feet tall and with a base diameter of approximately 4 feet, the wigwam is a good sized tent to have in the corner of your dining room during these cold months. If The Boy had a bigger bedroom, it would be up there for him as a hiding place, I can see it making a great reading corner in the future.

There are six wooden poles (each is in two parts and joins in the middle with a plastic tube to strengthen them) which slide through elastic loops along each join in the wigwam with a deep pocket for them to slot into at the base. They then protrude through the hole at the top of the thick canvas and are joined together with an incredibly clever, but slightly tricky, lacing and beading technique, ensuring the correct shape for the wigwam.

The canvas is simply stunning. A really thick, good quality canvas with bright colours which aren't brash, and the simplistic animal designs are spot on for little ones. It's bright and attractive and, when the Spring has returned, will look beautiful in the garden! I'm quite impressed with the 'doors' on this, the design has been adapted so that it now uses three Velcro patches to hold them closed, as opposed to the original fabric ties (something which would have been too difficult for pre-schoolers).

The Boy adores his wigwam and has taken his cushion, cuddly toys and a few books in there to get some peace and quiet. It is most definitely his domain, although he lets Mr. TheBoyandMe or me come in sometimes.

I loved wendy houses as a child and I'd thoroughly recommend a wigwam for your pre-schoolers, it's great fun for development of the imagination!

Big Game Hunters have a variety of wigwams available, the one we were sent retails for £49.99, which is the cheapest price that I've seen it available.

I was provided with this wigwam for the purpose of this review. Our opinions are honest and unbiased.

Review: Brio My First Railway Set

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Ever since The Boy was born, both Mr. TheBoyandMe and I have been secretly waiting for the moment when he was old enough to play with a Brio train set. Well it seems that the time has come for our wishes to be met, as his imagination has suddenly jumped into gear.

We were recently sent this gorgeous My First Railway Set to review from the Wooden Toy Shop, and it is a beautifully crafted starter set for wooden railways.

The 15-piece set contains both straight and curved (double-sided) track pieces, a soft fabric station that is also a tunnel, two on-off ramps, a bright green engine and three freight wagons decorated with images of fruit: one banana, two apples and three pears (excellent for counting).

The Boy wasted no time in opening the box up, examining the instructions and doing the typical male thing of abandoning them in favour of figuring it out himself. The track pieces are very high-quality wood, each one embossed with the 'Brio' stamp. This Brio branding is also on the engine and each of the carriages; each wheel is stamped. A very nice little finishing touch.

The Boy absolutely adores this train set. His imagination has been ignited and he is beginning to role-play with these small-world toys, re-enacting events that happen in his life and making sense of them. He has combined the set with his cars and even the Peppa Pig playground has been incorporated, although George is not very good at holding onto the engine and keeps falling off. Suddenly The Boy is now living his name and the little baby is being replaced by a child who uses voices for the different carriages which talk to each other as they join up to the engine!

We've added several more sets of tracks, bridges and ramps to The Boy's Christmas list now as he seems to be completely engaged with this train set. It's been set up on the living room floor for several weeks now and is played with every single day, more than any other toy.

The Brio My First Railway Set is available from Wooden Toy Shop priced at £23.95

We were sent this item for the purpose of this review. Our opinions are honest and unbiased.