Water Wheel: TRU Review

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With the sun blazing in the sky today, it feels appropriate to post this review of the Step2 Water Wheel Play Table.

This item came separately to the main box of products to review, and thankfully after The Boy's birthday because we had actually give him the Step2 Sand and Water table as his present! He was absolutely beside himself as daddy opened up the packaging to the Water Wheel Table, he really was desperate to get into it and tried to help as much as possible.

As with many of the Step2 products, assembly is extremely easy; the three sturdy legs just push up into the holes and click into place. That is the biggest bit of assembly required! The water wheel table (suitable for 1year +) is a large round table which sits very nicely at waist height (for my two year old) off the ground. It isn't height adjustable, however what I would say is that Boy Cousin plays with it alonside The Boy, and he is five and very tall. I also think that for younger or shorter children, you could remove the legs and have them sit on the floor to play with it.

Accesories that come with the table include a water wheel (obviously!), a blue cup that rests on the top of the water wheel to control the flow of water, a pouring cup and two small plastic sailboats. It is bright and colourful and very attractive. The water play area consists of two pools of water, one higher than the other, and they are connected together on one side by a slope which the boats can travel down. The water wheel is on the opposite side to the ramp so in theory a boat can be placed on the top pool, water poured into the water wheel and then the boat travels down the slope.

I've tried the table out now for the last three weeks with a variety of children; Boy Cousin, The Boy, Fiery Girl Cousin and my baby and toddler group. These children have ranged in age from just 1 year old to 5 years old. All have loved playing with it and have gravitated towards such a simple toy. This is an excellent recommendation by itself.

There are a couple of small points to make about the Water Wheel Play Table:

  • The 1 year old boy who played with it had great difficulty not knocking the water wheel out of position; it rests in place and really could do with a clip or catch of some sort to prevent it from coming out of place.
  • The boats take on water incredibly easily and capsize. They also don't flow down the ramp easily because the top of the ramp is a little bit too high for them to glide over, unless you fill the table to capacity.
  • Filling the table to capacity will make it extremely difficult to empty because there is no plug! As I've mentioned, we' ve got the Step2 sand and water table and there are plugs in both halves. This makes it easy to collect the water in a bucket and dispose of in a responsible and environmentally friendly manner. Emptying the Water Wheel Table is tricky and invariably wastes water.
  • There is no cover, which is something that Step2 supply on other products. This means that the toys need removing over night, and the table can get quite dirty.

These things would make the Step2 Water Wheel Table a '10/10', and easier for parents to use with their children. As it is at the moment, I'd give it a '8/10'. Initially I'd have said a '7', but The Boy has not stopped playing with it, so I'll be generous!

 


 

The Step2 Water Wheel Play Table is available from Toys R Us at the moment of the bargain price of £34.99 (was £44.99) and is suitable for children 1 years old +.

We were provided with this product for review purposes. Our opinions are honest and our own.

SIGG EcoBottles

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A little over a month ago I was chosen to be the first mummy reviewer for SIGG EcoBottles.

I know some of you maybe wondering who SIGG are, and that's kind of the point of this post isn't it? Ok, so SIGG was founded in 1908 in Switzerland and today is the leading brand of reusable water bottle in the world. SIGG bottles are made from a single piece of pure aluminium and use modern and very funky designs, trendsetters like Vivienne Westwood, Sienna Miller, Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Zac Efron and Cameron Diaz know what they're talking about don't they? There is even one in permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

This video of how the bottles are made is actually really fascinating, please take a few minutes to watch it.

Since The Boy and I (see, I can do grammar) have taken charge of our SIGG EcoBottles, we've found them invaulable. The Boy had a few drinks bottles, mostly well known brands of tippy cups and made of plastic, which of course we never left the house without. However, I would often forget my own water bottle. Mainly because I didn't have one! Or I'd end up fishing out a battered plastic one from the recycling and trying to wash it in a hurry to refill, making myself stressed and late. Although being honest here, I'd forget and end up having to buy yet another plastic bottle that gets binned or recycled. In the UK alone 250,000 plastic bottles are dumped every hour.

This is not good. I pride myself on being a little bit of an eco-warrier, in areas that I can be. We recycle everything that we can, and I am always amazed at how much plastic there is, but really we should make more of an effort to prevent the need for this. As a primary school teacher who has taught the theme of environmental impact for several years, I know the importance of teaching about the four 'R's: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Really they should come in that order. Refuse to accept that extra packaging in the first place. Reduce the amount of waste that you are creating by reusing and recycling (Plastic bottles constitute close to 50% of recyclable waste in landfill sites). However, recycling should really come last of all in order to reduce the impact on the world's resources by having to use a process to create another product.

This is where the SIGG EcoBottles come in to adjust an area of my life which impacts on the world in which we live. By cleaning and resuing my SIGG EcoBottle I haven't bought a single plastic bottle of spring water in over a month. I would normally have bought, maybe fifteen? That's fifteen less items of plastic that need a process happening to them in order to be reused. There is of course another issue here. We live in Britain. We have good, clean and healthy tap water and there is no need whatsoever to have to buy spring water.

The reasons why I love my SIGG EcoBottle in a nutshell:

  • it is environmentally responsible to reuse a bottle rather than recycle (and saves money!)
  • it is funky and pretty with a nifty little design on it (all the girls in school admire it)
  • because it's made of metal, it keeps the water cool for ages
  • it is lightweight yet very robust
  • it has a variety of accessories, like a fliptop lid to suit your needs.

This is where you can get your mitts on a SIGG EcoBottle and be one of the cool people that is frugal and environmentally conscious.

Competition

I have teamed up with SIGG EcoBottles UK to offer one lucky reader the chance to win this Barnyard Fun bottle for their child. They normally retail for £14.00 so this is a treat indeed and one that your little one will adore.

In order to be in with a chance to win this funky bottle we would like to know how you would make the world a better place! It can be comical or serious, it can be as simple as teaching children to say 'thank you’ or as complex as ‘building clean water fountains across the world’. This is our example.

TheBoyandMe would make the world a better place by cheering people up with our silly and funny antics.

Comment below completing the phrase: "I would make the world a better place by…"

  • One more entry can be gained by tweeting:

I want to win a @SIGGEcoBottleUK with @TheBoyandMe's blog https://www.theboyandme.co.uk/?p=2868

Again please leave an additional comment for this.

T&C

Competition closes Saturday 18th June 2011 at 8pm. I will draw the winner using random.org and notify them that evening. If they have not replied by Monday 20th June 2011 I will redraw. UK entrants only. Facebook and twitter are not affiliated with the running of this competition and have no responsibility for it.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED.

Thank you so much for all your entries into the SIGG EcoBottle competition. There were some fantastic thoughts on how to make the world a better place, from ensuring that everyone was allowed to have at least 3 duvet days a year to by smiling at random strangers.

But of course, in true Highlander style, there can be only one. So using my faithful companion www.random.org I have a winner:

Congratulations Helen Jessup from The Crazy Kitchen! You've won a fabulous Barnyard Fun SIGG EcoBottle for your little one. He's going to love it! And who says being the first to enter doesn't pay off?

Thanks to everyone for entering, please check out my other competitions over here.

Review: Makin' Mud Pies (or just getting soaky wet)

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The Boy adores playing with water. He loves washing his hands, the bath, swimming (mostly as long as his daft mother doesn't take him too far into the deep water!), filling up containers with water, and playing with watering cans. You may have seen that I recently set up a water play area for him in the garden, which he loves. If we are feeling in an adventurous mood, we let him play with the hose which is hilarious because he always ends up "soaky wet!".

So when we saw this rather marvellous contraption recently in Toys 'R' Us we really couldn't resist it. This is the Little Tikes 'Makin' Mud Pies' Kitchen (retails for £39.99). We're getting him a sand and water table for his birthday in June, but I'm a little impatient, impulsive instinctive and so we went with my gut feeling that he would love it.

And he does, he really does.

Now I may let him loose with the water, but I'm slightly apprehensive when it comes to the 'Makin' Mud' part. (I really don't know why, because I used to be there in the garden behind the greenhouse digging in the dirt and ensuring that the consistency was just right for slopping and pouring. Just call me spoilsport mummy.) He has had lessons in mudpies from his five year old cousin, and it's only a matter of time before he tranfers these skills over to the kitchen, but for the moment, he's happy to play with the water functions.

The Little Tikes kitchen is fantastic and came along at the right time; he had started to become obsessed with turning the tap on and seeing the water gushing out. If I turned my back for a second, the little tike (ahem) was in the downstairs cloakroom splashing about in the hand basin. With this toy, he has his own tap and his own sink. The main sink and counter of the kitchen is actually a well for water which you can fill up and empty very easily, this also helps to weigh the kitchen down so it doesn't accidentally tip, or blow over in the wind. Into this counter is a moulded sink and a working tap! The tap actually pumps water out, but this is my only criticism of it; the pump action is at the moment very stiff and the water doesn't flow as easily as I think it should. However The Boy doesn't mind; he likes a challenge and it's his water so it doesn't matter. A bonus feature is that there is a bung underneath the plughole which allows for easy emptying of all the water, no residual ring is stuck anywhere in the mouldings.

The other feature of this kitchen is the mixer, used of course for ensuring a perfect consistency of mud. It's mounted on a stand on the counter, next to the sink and has a turn handle to rotate the sturdy plastic blade. It turns very easily although if The Boy gets the angle slightly wrong, it can lift up out of the bowl, but that is due to my 23 month old son's stage of physical development not a design flaw. He's actually put many different things in to mix including dried pasta and grass, but has never once thought about putting soil in yet. I'm sure the time will come! The set also comes with a sieve, a mixing bowl, a mould, a shaker pot, and two spoons; all of which are excellent for transfering water around.

I could draw on my teacher-knowledge and talk about the educational benefits of this kitchen 'til I'm blue in the face, but I'd rather let The Boy, and the toy, speak for themselves.

April

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In order to show a retrospective look at the past month, Tara has set us this challenge:

This week's theme is: April.
Can you capture this month in a photograph? Be it bunting, street parties, holidays, hot weather or none of the above.

Now, there I was busy assembling a nice little montage of the best photos of April when I thought I'd double-check the brief. Ah, a photograph. That tends to mean one doesn't it? Right start again and check the many snaps that I've taken.

This epitomises the past month. We've had amazing fun playing in the garden in the most beautiful weather, and The Boy has learnt a whole range of new skills learning through his play. We've planted seeds, watered the seeds, got "soaky wet" whilst playing with the hose. It's been so enjoyable and I can't wait for the rest of the summer, and to see The Boy exploring and learning about the world around him.

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Now pop over to The Gallery and look at the other entries into this week's Gallery.

Messy Play

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I've never been to Messy Play before and I must confess that I did actually wonder exactly what it was.

Fun! That's what!

If you've never taken your little one to Messy Play before, then I highly recommed you get yourself along there. They will have the opportunity to do things that you may shy away from doing; free painting, sticking, colouring (with felts! Eeek!), playing with jelly and custard (which actually The Boy didn't like that much because he doesn't like getting food everywhere) and generally having a whale of a time getting mucky.

As you can see:

The Boy thoroughly enjoyed himself and we'll definitely be going again. For him the best play activity was this one though.