What we have played with this week – September 30

R has been at school all week, so has only played at home in the evening.He is a few weeks into the new school year and has been very tired every night. More so that when he first went back at the start of the month, so play has been rather low key this week.

V-Tech Zoom camera

R loves taking photos. We have taken the camera out with us to loads of places, including the Art Gallery in Birmingham and the Botanical Gardens. He has also taken millions of photographs at home- mostly either of the floor or extreme close ups of things like his sister’s head, or his creations.

One afternoon after school he got his camera out, and C decided she wanted to get in on whatever her brother was doing so she put the case around her neck. They had a lovely, really cute modeling session for about 10 minutes before resuming fighting over the same toys!

We got the V Tech Zoom camera for R as a gift and he has thoroughly enjoyed it whenever we have got it out. His photography skills have improved significantly in the last few months as well. And when I next get the photos off his camera I may share some on this blog. We did take the camera away on holiday with us, so got him a compatible case to keep it in. I am not sure we actually used the camera while we were away though!

Sensory play

C has loved some of the sensory games we have played this week- you can read all about our Tuff Tuesday fun with cloud dough here

And about playing with pipe cleaners in a colander here

Labebe 2 in 1 Baby Walker

I think it has been this walker that she has played with the most though this week. C loves to go around the playroom picking her toys up (and often her brother’s too), and putting them into the walker. She then takes them off for a walk around the house before bringing them back and flinging them out onto the floor. Then she will repeat the sequence a number of times. Finally she makes sure the walker is empty, climbs in and sits. Sometimes she stays standing in it, and she has learned the hard way not to lean on the handle when she is standing inside the walker. Once she starts climbing in and put, that is it for a good half hour- in, out, in, out…….

C was given the Labebe 2 in 1 walker as a 1st birthday present. It has been an absolute hit and has lasted well beyond her birthday. I suspect she will continue to use it for a while.

What we have played with this week- September 24

This week our weekday routines became more solidified, with my son off to school each day and my daughter with my Mum for a few hours on Monday and Friday, and she and I off to Rhythm Time on Wednesday. My son is 4 and my daughter is 17 months.

Growplay Wooden ring stacker

This was a gift I received from a friend at a baby shower for my son. Both children have now really enjoyed it. It is a very simple toy- coloured rings on sticks. The aim of the game is to stack the correct number of rings onto each stick, the sticks are of varying heights.

The toy helps develop colour recognition skills with stacking 1 purple ring on the smallest stick, up to 5 red on the tallest. It exercises fine motor skills picking up the ring and placing it onto the stick- no mean feat for a small child! It can get them to start thinking creatively placing the discs on whichever stick they want. It introduces counting and numbers to them.

My son and I used to sometimes play with just the discs, rolling them, stacking them, making towers with them, placing them on their side to see if they will stay standing. It is a great toy.

Soft toy dog

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog will know that my daughter loves dogs. Adores them. If she hears one in the distance she will say “woo woo woo” (her version of woof woof, if she sees one she tries desperately to go over to say hello to the doggy. The poor girl will never have one as a child, however, as I have a dog phobia that I am working on challenging and overcoming at the moment, and  neither my husband nor R like them that much. She is very much in the minority on the dog loving front in our house.

 

So this toy is as close as she will probably get to having a dog until she moves out and can get her own pets! Unsurprisingly she loves Chi Chi and takes her with her whenever we go out. This or Upsy Daisy. She chews his feet and his nose so he is getting quite stinky already, and cuddles him so tight. It was one of my Mum’s charity shop finds, so I have no idea where it is from. God help us if we lose it!!

 

What we have played with this week- 16 September

This week was my son’s first full week back at school after the summer holidays. I was all prepared for him to be tired and grumpy when he got home and for us not to do much other than watch Paw Patrol and PJ Masks on repeat after school all week. I have been surprised though, by how much energy he has after school.

We leave the school building and he and his friends have 15-20 minutes running around after each other in the playground playing tag, and then we go home. I force him to do some reading of his school book or some keywords practice, and then he wants to go back to playing again. It’s lovely to see, and it’s always imaginative games (admittedly based on TV programs), and also for me quite exhausting because he has a very specific idea of how the game will go in his head and I frequently fail to guess what that idea is, so he has to tell me off a lot. By about 4.45 I have generally had enough and it is me who puts Paw Patrol on just for a break before I go and cook dinner!

For R, the toys he has played with most this week are the Dino cadets I think. They are his version of the Paw Patrol (although often they travel to Octonauts world, Paw Patrol world, PJ Masks world during these games). Each of them has a job corresponding to one of the Paw Patrol’s jobs. He has said that he would like to make badges for the Dino cadets, so we’ll have to have a go at making them one day.

C also loves to play with them whenever she can, but generally she just moves the away from whatever set up R has put them in and he gets frustrated with her for that, and then she gets upset when she can’t take them away as soon as she wants to. Ahhh, lessons in sharing are hard, aren’t they?!

For her, the daytimes have become very quiet without at at home. She misses him, that much is clear, but she does then get free range over the toys in the playroom. This week has all been about sensory play for her with her box of bangles

I wrote a longer post about the box of bangles here: https://wp.me/p8hHnu-aQ

When we haven’t been playing with the box of bangles, she has preferred playing with her vehicles over her other toys this week with her toy tractor being the absolute favorite. It was from John Lewis and is a shape sorter, a pull along toy and a musical toy all in one. She loves it. And we get to practice animal noises too because each of the animals makes their respective sounds.

What We Have Played With This Week – 13 May 2018

Monday was a bank holiday in the UK and so my husband was off work. Unusually it also coincided with some beautiful weather (generally if it can rain on a bank holiday, it will. By the same logic I predict that the weather will range from ok to really lovely from now until the end of July when schools break up, when it will then proceed to rain for a month!) we managed to get some time in the garden taming the beast that is our law – I should say neither my husband or I is green fingered in the least. We also got the paddling pool out and both children loved it. C loved splashing about it in and R used it to float his GUPS in.

You just can’t beat a paddling pool on a hot day.

Elephant Teething Toy

The body of the elephant is soft and cuddly, and the head is made of silicon or rubber (like Sophie la Giraffe) and can be used as a teething toy. Neither C nor my eldest have been all that interested in soft toys, but she does like this elephant. I think because she can give him a good chew. He is also, like her favourite Upsy Daisy doll, a good size for her to hold herself. Other cuddly toys seem to be a bit ton big to easily grasp, but this one fits in her hands nicely. This was given to C as a gift and I couldn’t find a link for you. If I find a link I will update the post.

Green Toys Ferry

This Green Toys Ferry was given to my son for a birthday a couple of years ago. It is BPA free and made from recycled plastic and comes with 2 cars to go on the ferry as well. My son has had years worth of fun out of it as it is a bath toy. When he was younger he used to play with it on the bath or even in the sink. He used to love pretending he was transferring people to their hotel (we had a spate of about 3 months where we were away for various reasons quite a bit and he became a bit obsessed with hotels!) Now he just likes to try to sink the Ferry. Thankfully he doesn’t say there are passengers on it when he sinks the boat. My daughter likes to post other toys between the deck and the canopy.

I should say that it is recommended for ages 3 and up, so if you do let you get children use it your should supervise them very closely.

Labebe Baby Walker 2 in 1

C is so keen to start walking, but she is not there yet. And ideally she would like to do it by herself rather than have to rely on us, thank you very much. So she loves her walkers. The red one was my son’s but the blue elephant Labebe Walker was a birthday present for C for her 1st birthday. She likes both of the walkers, but loves the elephant because not only can it give her a bit of independence with walking, but she can also collect stuff in it! In the picture above she managed to collect her tea set, some play food, some of her brother’s Octonauts toys and one of his sandals! If I ever lose something in the house now this is the first place I look!

What we have played with this week- April 29

On Monday it was my daughter’s first birthday. So we have a nearly 4 year old and a 1 year old in the house. She isn’t really a baby any more, more like a toddler. The amount she is pulling herself up and using furniture/toys/is to walk along with then she will properly be toddling about very shortly I am sure. My son also went back to school after the Easter holidays.

This week’s play has mostly been about the new toys. For both of them. I bought toys for my daughter that I thought my son would probably like too. And they have pretty much all proven to be a hit with both of them.

Fisher-Price Bright Beats Build a Beat stacker

There are two “modes” available with this toy. The first, and easiest, is for music and lights to come on whenever the base is pressed. This happens if it is used with the stackers or just pressed without them. This is how my daughter is playing with it at the moment. She loves it. She’s always really liked music so it’s right up her alley. The second mode is a little harder. As each stacker (the blurb calls them a “boogie”) is placed on the stack and the base is pressed then the music builds. It’s a fun toy that my daughter loves. Music, lights and things to stack/knock over, what more could a 1 year old want? Build a Beat stacker

Wobbel board

Oh we do love this Wobbel board.

As a second child C already has access to a lot of toys, and in trying to think of toys she would enjoy for more than 5 minutes and wouldn’t just take up space in our playroom I wanted to get some more open ended play toys that would last, and that both children would enjoy. I thought she would like a rocking horse as I had tried her on one at a shop. But they take up a lot of space so decided against it. Instead I got this- she can sit on it and rock (like she is doing in the video), she can try standing on it (it does a great job of working on core muscles apparently, even for adults, but I haven’t braved standing on it yet myself!), she can use it as a ramp-so far the Octonauts have been dropped on it a few times. We have turned it upside down and used it for both children as a bridge. It can be used as a tunnel, a hiding place and probably about a thousand more things that we haven’t tried yet. We got our from Babipur

Melissa and Doug Tea Set

After having a boy and spending hours and hours and hours playing trains I am going to try to encourage my daughter to do things like play tea parties every now and then at least. My son loved the play kitchen we got him, still does to be honest, so I was delighted that she got this play tea set for her birthday. It’s great. It’s a wooden tea set with everything you would expect together with some fruit tea bags and a couple of biscuits. We spent a happy 15 or 20 minutes pretending to make tea and drink from the cups- ok so it was the tea pot in C’s case, but still…. you can find more information about the tea set Here

What We Have Played With This Week-end March 2018

It is the last full week of term. The weather has got a bit better and Easter is approaching. My daughter is now 11 months old and is into absolutely everything! I am so glad we got the playpen for her as she will quite happily play in there while I pop out of the room. I can even put tea on. I come back in the room every 2 mins and only cook things that take a max of 10 mins to prepare at the moment, so my application for Masterchef will have to wait for a while!

My daughter is very good at just getting on with playing by herself. She potters about having a go with her toys and can do this on her own for a while. I don’t know if this is a girl thing or a second child thing because my son only really started playing by himself just over a year ago he always wanted us to join in with him with whatever he was doing. I tell you the games he played knocking trains over on the tracks, setting them up and knocking them over again felt like they went on forever!

Imaginative play and rediscovering an old favourite

My son has been at school all week. But last Sunday night we got his Octonauts toys out of the loft. He was obsessed with Octonauts for a while leading up to the birth of our daughter and then dinosaurs took over. He has recently got back into the Octonauts after a half term trip to Sealife Centre with his Grandma. He has been so excited about the Octonauts toys and has wanted to ply with them as soon as he wakes in the morning and as soon as he has got home from school. He now makes up little stories with them and chats away to them. Yesterday I don’t think he stopped talking to the Octonauts or about them for about 4 hours! His sister has also got in on the Octonauts act!

Music toys and games -Fisher Price Classic Music Box

C was given this record player for Christmas and initially she like trying to eat the records. Now she likes to “dance” when we put the records on, take them out of their compartment at the back, try to put hem on the turntable, and grab the arm. It was a great present for her because she loves music and musical toys and games.

Construction play

I love the children playing with construction toys. It gets them using their fine motor skills as well as their imagination. Of course C’s skills with Megabloks are somewhat limited at the moment, largely to just deconstructing whatever I have put together, but she thinks it’s a great game! She is having a go at putting the blocks on top of each other every now and then though.

Rummaging- Fine motor skills

C’s favourite drawer in our playroom is the one with all of our son’s cars and trains in. She loves a good rummage around and this drawer gives her the best opportunity for rummaging. With her selecting and picking up whichever small vehicle she wants from the drawer it gives her great fine motor skill practice, but is not something I let her do unless I am very close by as the vehicles are all very small with small parts that could come off easily and be swallowed -everything still goes in her mouth. Part of the appeal of this drawer is opening and closing the drawer itself. She is getting g lots of practice at not trapping her fingers. Something she doesn’t always manage.

Using stamps and pattern making

I have mentioned before on this blog that my son loves drawing. He has always loved using this super scribbler to draw on. We have a small, cheap version that he can use in the car too as this one is a bit too big, we have tried. He has recently started using the stampers with this ELC super scribbler to make simple patterns. At the moment just a series of shapes, but he likes to talk through what he is doing as he goes along. It’s quite fascinating to watch.

Introduction to sewing

A few weeks ago we watched some episodes of Creative Galaxy on Netflix and R particularly enjoyed an episode where they made their own soft toys. When I have the chance I like making soft toys with yarn so like the idea of eventually teachers g the children how to do this too. I thought it would be good to take advantage of his interest in the programme and bought this Woodland Creatures Sew and Play bumper box to give him an introduction to sewing. It cones with everything you need to make the creature. The kit has pre-stamped holes to put the plastic needle through to teach simple running stitch. The creature’s features are either pre-printed or stuck on. R quite enjoyed it, but he was on the young side of who the kit is aimed towards and got a bit bored with the sewing. So I finished the sewing off for him. He told me he enjoyed stuffing the hedgehog though. The animals can be bought singly or in a bumper pack of 6.

What we have played with this week – March 18

This has been another slightly odd week. My son has been at school all week so has only had time to play after school. However, he has been quite tired all week so hasn’t done a lot after school – he has one and a half weeks left until his Easter holiday so I think he is just ready for his holiday. My daughter was not well for most of the week. She had a stomach bug and was really tired and lethargic, not wanting to play for most of the week.

It is now the Spring equinox and British Summer Time starts next week, and the weather is entirely appropriate for this time of year:

So what have we played with this week?

Putting things inside each other

My daughter has discovered this week not only that one object can be placed inside another, but that she can do it herself. She has spent most of the week playing with her stacking cups, her Feed Me Dino and a ball. She has placed the food discs from the Feed Me Dino inside the stacking cups as well as the ball, and the stacking cups have been placed inside each other. She hasn’t yet worked out for herself that the larger cups cannot fit inside the smaller ones.

Shape sorters

Another toy from when my son was this age, I dug out our shape sorters. We have two. One is a bench and hammer. Once the shapes are placed into the shape sorting bench you can hammer them out again. Each of the shapes is a rattle as well. This was something my mother had bought for my son as a Christmas present in his first year. He is still enjoying it, playing more with the hammer (as well as trying to drop the shapes onto his sister when they fall out). His sister largely likes to shake and rattle the shapes at the moment. But she does like to try to place them into the bench.

She really likes our other shape sorter. It is a ball and shape sorter. She likes to roll the ball about and has been surprisingly good at pushing the shapes into the ball, albeit that I have needed to find the right hole for her. We have also enjoyed making towers with the shapes and knocking them over. In fact she has found knocking things over in general quite hilarious this week.

Pom Pom colour matching and scooping activity

We had parents afternoon this week and his teacher said that my son was doing well, developing as he should be, but that he sometimes didn’t press as hard as he needed to with his pencil, so we needed to do a bit of work with him strengthening his hands for writing and colouring with pencils and pencil crayons. So this afternoon I set up a simple Pom Pom colour matching game and got him to scoop up the Pom Poms using these great scoopers and place them into the matching coloured section in the egg carton base. It’s an activity that took only a few minutes to set up and is so good for fine motor skills development. I love the scoopers and plan to use them more and more. I have a digging in “mud” activity planned for later in the week which will make use of the scoopers again.

Mr Men magazine

My son loves to draw, and he loves the Mr Men, so when we went for a snowy walk to the shops to buy milk this afternoon I couldn’t resist getting him a Mr Men magazine. We spent a happy half hour when we got back drawing and writing in the magazine, practising correct pen hold as we did it.

What we have played with this week

This last week has been a tricky one as my daughter has not really been feeling all that well. She has not been nearly as excitable or interested in her toys as she usually is. She has, however, learned how to wave almost on cue when we ask her to say hello or bye bye. She adds “buh buh buh” to the wave as well which is so vey cute. With it being Mother’s Day in the UK we were out pretty much all weekend this week as well having a family day on Sunday and spending Saturday with the children’s Grandmothers. So there has been a little less time than normal for playing.

 

Playing with porridge oats

When my son was the age my daughter is now I used to set up sensory experiences and messy play for him. We would sit together to do these activities and I would hand him new implements, like spatulas and whisks to play with in the water or oats or whatever I gave him to play with. He always thoroughly enjoyed it. Now with my second child I give her these things to have a play with and keep her occupied while I do activities with her brother. She still thoroughly enjoys them though. Here she was given porridge oats on her high chair tray, and after a little while she had a saucepan and spoon from our play kitchen. She enjoyed swooshing the oats around the tray, but really loved picking them up and dropping them into the saucepan.

 

V Tech Sit to Stand Dancing Tower

I bought a couple of Activity Stations for my son when he was little, but this was the only one he actually enjoyed playing with for longer than 5 minutes. The V Tech Dancing Tower is an activity centre for children 9-36 months, although I found that without his sister around my son lost interest in it from around 18 months. He has developed a very keen interest in it again recently, pretty much whenever his sister starts to play with it! There are several games with the Dancing Tower – a game following the lights; a game where they play different styles of music depending on which button you press (I’ll be honest I slightly take issue with their version of hip hop); there is a game where you meet the players in the band. At the moment C likes to hold onto the handles and she sort of drives it. She loves the music. My son likes to dance around to it and press the buttons before my daughter can get anywhere near them. I must apologise that on the video below the batteries are on their way out.

 

K’Nex Budding Builders Building Set

My son absolutely loves these. He got the K’Nex  for Christmas last year and he plays with it pretty much every weekend. It is usually my husband who plays with them with my son at the weekends while my daughter has a nap. My husband tries to get R to make different creatures each time, but at the moment R insists that the same ones are made – Chip and the Evil Bug he calls them. Sometimes it is one of their birthdays and he will then make a duplo birthday cake for whoever’s birthday it is!

Duplo

We have had quite a lot of Duplo at home for a while now. I had hoped that R would really get into Duplo, and later lego as I like the construction toys (I think I wanted to play with them) so I asked several people to buy him duplo sets for Christmas and his birthday, including this Duplo castle. R was never really all that bothered about it. I really enjoyed building the castle for him, and we had it out for several days, before I realised that R was ignoring it, apart from the missile launcher! A few months ago my daughter started to become interested in playing with Megabloks, and of course R decided he wanted to as well. So he started to build towers with the Megabloks and this led him to start making things with his Duplo as well. He now makes birthday cakes (his version of them!), towers, dinosaurs etc with them. It took a while, but he is now playing with them a lot.

 

What we have played with this week

This week has been the last week of this half term for my boy. He was in school for 4 days, stayed overnight at his Grandma’s one night and went to a friend’s birthday party today. He has been learning to write letters for a while now, but this week it seems like something has clicked for him and his writing has come on no end. He is loving drawing as well. Not colouring in, he’s not too interested in that, but drawing. I was so impressed with the pictures he drew at his Grandma’s house!

My daughter this week has been pulling herself up on anything in sight and is getting more and more confident with standing. She can hold on with just one hand for longer periods and she even stood entirely unassisted for a second yesterday. She still loves a good rummage, and has recently taken to holding things up to show us what she has got. This includes both food and toys. She has started “dancing” too which is very cute to watch.

So, on to more specific things we have played with. R spent some time this afternoon playing with some play clay he got in his party bag. He has only recently started to enjoy actually shaping and moulding things like play clay and play dough himself. Previously we would get play dough put, but he would want to watch us and direct us as to what to make for him. Now he is doing it all for himself. Today he used thin strips of playclay to make a Mr Skinny, and then put some of the strips together to make a model of Mr Strong.

We have played quite a bit with the playpen this week. Both children seem to love it

For Christmas I bought C a wooden activity cube, the link to the one I bought made by Lewo is Here It does say that it is unsuitable for under 3s, but I thought what 3 year old would want to play with this? It turns out that my boy is the sort of 3 year old! There are lacing beads and shape sorting activities as well as xylophone on this activity cube. My daughter does love it but it is a bit too old for her as she has nearly trapped her ha d in it a few times! She sticks the xylophone beater in her mouth and I am not confident to leave her alone with it. I think she will be fine with it in about 6 months or so but for now she can only play with it if we are there with her. And her brother hasn’t got hold of it first.

I mentioned the pulling herself up on anything and everything? Well here she is having pulled herself up to have a look at the train set a little boy was playing with in our local branch of Foyles. I love this Foyles. It’s always clean and bright and, while it is not a big shop when we go in during the week there is always plenty of space to have a look around. They have had this Brio train set out for children to play with since opening a few years ago. I used to go in all the time when my son was at home and obsessed with trains. I must admit that we didn’t always buy something when we went in, but I have bought more books from Foyles than I otherwise would have done just because we were there with him and books caught my eye.

What we have been playing with this week

Each week on either a Saturday or Sunday I will post here a roundup of the top toys that my children have played with. It will have to be the toys that have played with the most because, frankly, the baby can play with 15 different things in the course of 20 minutes sometimes. My son attends school (preschool) 5 days a week, so it’s only in the evenings and weekends that he gets to play with his toys.

First up is a basket of play food from Sainsburys that my son was given a couple of years ago. At the time he was very into a cash register that my mum had found in a charity shop near her and I thought the play food would go well with playing with this cash register when I was thinking of suitable Christmas presents for family to get him. We had also got a set of plastic play food with a plastic knife for him. we now have both sets of play food in the basket and my son likes to refer to it as his “picnic”ers, he likes to pack the basket most nights ready for a picnic. My daughter likes to rummage in the basket, chuck all the play food out and then give it all a good lick or a chew! She does it over and over again.

Once again both my children like playing with this Fisher Price telephone. I think this is an old style one (I do love a good charity shop bargain) and the newer ones have been slightly updated, but I am sure their basic function is the same. The dial makes a ringing noise, and the eyes move when the phone is pulled along with the pull cord. My son likes to use it to call the Paw Patrol and tell them what jobs need doing. My daughter likes to chew on the phone (she likes to chew on everything!)  and bang the receiver down on the phone. It’s a good job it is quite hardy.

I am so pleased how much my daughter enjoys playing with the musical instruments we have. Her favourite is this ELC rainmaker with the John Lewis keyboard a close second. She loves the demo feature on the keyboard. For a baby it has everything – lights, sound.

My son loves playing with the iPad. Of course. We actually used getting him new apps as a potty training incentive for him. He has been playing this app, a snow day skiing one with a few additional games in the app including this hot chocolate making game. To be honest the hot chocolate game is his favourite at the moment.

R loves Mr Men, and he was given this Nutty Putty Mr Men set for Christmas. He loves it. We have made 3 Mr Men so far, Mr Noisy, Little Miss Sunshine and Little Miss Scary. Once made, the Nutty Putty can be baked in the oven so it becomes permanent.

Here is one of the results, our Little Miss Scary after she was baked in the oven.