Whether shopping for new clothing, supplies for the nursery or safety products for the car as a new parent you want to know you are buying the very best products for your children. With this being said, manufacturers/companies are going to try to sell you on anything and tell you it is the ‘best product on the market’ even though this might not be the case. Before you buy consider a few of these tips to ensure you do buy the very best product for your kids.
Tag: toys
Project MC2 – Smart Pixel Purse
You don’t have to scroll back too far through our pages to know that we’re huge Project MC2 fans around here, and have more than a few of the products in our collection. The latest to amuse my girls is the Smart Pixel Purse.
Luxury Role-Play Gifts For Kids
My girls are very independent and can happily get lost in their own role-play games for hours. So long as I provide fresh water and some snacks from time to time, they can spend whole blocks of days lost in their small world game play – you know, where the toys in front of them are a whole world? Some of their favourites for pretend play right now are a dolls house and a play kitchen, but over time there have been other favourites, like a parking garage with a vehicle lift and a wooden tree toy with platforms and swings.
I thought I’d share some of the best luxury role-play gifts for kids that they’ll come back to again and again.
Read more: Luxury Role-Play Gifts For Kids
Sweet Treats And Desserts With Series 4 Num Noms
As you know from our previous posts, the girls are huge fans of Num Noms, and we’ve just recently received some of the new series 4 collections, much to the kiddies delight.
Lalaloopsy Mini Jewel Sparkles Review
Continuing on the theme of what’s turned out to be a crazy amount of dolls lately, we recently received a Mini Jewel Sparkles Lalaloopsy doll, and since we only received (and expected to receive) one, there were tears in the house!
Lalaloopsy dolls were once rag dolls who magically came to life when their very last stitch was sewn, taking on the personalities of the materials that were used to make them, so since Jewel Sparkles came to life on the 13th of March, she seemed a perfect fit for Aviya, who was born on the 13th of March.
In January this year, Lalaloopsy launched a Netflix Original Series, an animated series featuring all-new original music that brings to life the popular Lalaloopsy line of dolls.Read more: Lalaloopsy Mini Jewel Sparkles Review
LOL Surprise Dolls Review
To my eternal chagrin, my little Aviya is a collector. She loves collecting things – it used to be rocks, then it became Shopkins, then NumNoms, and now, LOL Surprise Dolls. It’s a good thing we have a big house with plenty of room for little things.
The other thing about this particular little girl is that she loves pass the parcel. It’s her favourite party game – she loves it so much, for Christmas I wrapped 50 little collectables in a big ball for her Christmas present. She loved it.
So, LOL Surprise Dolls are totally her cup of tea!
LOL Surprise is a big ball, wrapped in seven layers, with each layer revealing a ‘surprise’.
Read more: LOL Surprise Dolls Review
Dreamworks Trolls Fancy Dress Wig & Friendship Watch Review
Halloween may have come and gone, but in our house, every day is just another opportunity for fancy dress. One of my neighbours recently exasperatedly commented that she’d never seen my children not dressed as fairies or other fictional characters! Since we recently watched Dreamworks’ Trolls we were all too happy to try out (or is that try on?) some Trolls fancy dress.
Trolls is a very light-hearted musical movie. It’s set in a plastic fantastic, super colourful world, with ultra happy characters – all but one – who go through a series of stresses, most of which is the immanence of becoming supper to the Bergens, a larger, uglier race. The trolls escape, forge a new life, and soon forget the dangers of the Bergens in the happiness of their new home. Of course, this leaves the Bergens sad and miserable (they believe you can only be happy by eating a Troll), and eternally in search of the Trolls. During one loud and carefree party, the fireworks attract the Bergens, and Troll-world is thrown into disaster again. Poppy, the happiest troll ever born, and Branch, her extreme opposite, set off to rescue their friends, and so starts a journey in which these unlikely allies begin to understand each other and find the love they’ve been searching for right under their noses. The Bergen king finds himself in his own Cinderella story with a scullery maid and the Trolls help him realise his love for her, and in the end the good guys win, the bad guys are banished, traitors are found out, the humble inherit a kingdom and everyone goes home happy, and singing one of the multitude of pop songs incorporated into this Dreamworks musical.
[youtube xyjm5VQ11TQ]Read more: Dreamworks Trolls Fancy Dress Wig & Friendship Watch Review
Schleich Horse Club Pick Up With Horse Box {Review}
Schleich have come a long way since I was a child with a drawer full of blue smurfs! We have a decent selection of farm animals from Schleich and a lot of plastic horses from Playmobil, so I was really excited to be sent the new Horse Club Pick Up With Horse Box to review because I knew my horse loving 7 year old would be thrilled with it.
Read more: Schleich Horse Club Pick Up With Horse Box {Review}
The New Doll In Town: Project MC2
A few months ago my daughter was browsing Netflix for something to watch when she came across Project MC2, an action miniseries about four teenage girls who use their science know-how to be secret agents and save the day. She was engrossed in it and has watched it a dozen times since, so when I saw there were dolls to match, I was excited to get her one.
Since watching the show, she’s decided that she wants to be both a scientist and an inventor – in her spare time when she’s not being a dancer, that is – and who am I to stand in her way.
Christmas Gift: My First Scalextric
One of the gifts under many trees this year will be a My First Scalextric set, a beginners introduction into Scalextrics. I remember playing on a set myself as a child, many many moons ago, but I don’t remember what it was.
We’ve been reviewing the My First Scalextric set, and been having a lot of fun with it.
Firstly I should say that setting up, I didn’t follow the instructions, so don’t look at my pictures as an example of set up!
In the box you will find the track pieces to form a figure-of-8 track, two stilt contraptions to hold the raised track up, two controllers and their related cabling, and two cars. There’s a general colour scheme is red and yellow with the track parts in grey.
The track clips into each other, and also fits with other tracks from the Micro Scalextric range, so while you use this as your starter track, you can build on it as your child(ren) get(s) older and more confident.
When setting up, if you’re as newbie to Scalextrics as the child this set is for, it’s useful to follow the instructions, because it should be set up with the arrows all facing in the direction the cars will be going. You’ll save yourself a lot of frustration by just doing it the right way from the start.
That said, it’s not hard to set up, and is pretty quick. You don’t need batteries either, which is another bonus come Christmas day.
So how does it work? We’re quite happy with it. I’ve read other reviews where people have complained bitterly about the My First Scalextric set, but considering that we don’t have ‘proper’ Scalextric to compare it to, we are quite happy. If you go too fast around the corners you fly off the track (much like driving in real life, then!), so there’s a bit of skill to it too.
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I like that there are grooves in the controllers, so you can stop children from just going full throttle from the get-go, and in so doing prevent the cars flying off the tracks to an untimely demise.
While this is a set for young children, from 3 years of age, it does require some adult supervision. You can’t just leave the kids to it (I know mine would have the cars riding up and down the walls of the house and over the carpets and in the bath, if I left them to it). Instead the little connectors on under the cars need to be kept protected to make sure that they make the right contact on the track.
For fans of Scalextric, My First Scalextric may not be your favourite set, but it is a good starter set, and it’s definitely a good set for younger children if you don’t want to spend a fortune on a beginners kit. And as far as Christmas gifts go, it’ll be great for spending time and having fun together after all the gifts are unwrapped on Christmas morning.