My Three Little Strawberries

Helping My Children Maintain Friendships and Routine During Lockdown With Kindi Kids

Helping My Children Maintain Friendships and Routine During Lockdown With Kindi Kids

Children are really missing their normal routine during the Coronavirus lockdown.

Every Childs  routine is different but usually includes exercise, preschool, hobbies and social activities so we have tried our best to maintain these.

Social development is a really important part of learning and development for children.

They learn to take turns, have patience, and share to name a few aspects.

To continue this we have been Face timing Isabella’s cousin and friends.

Isabella and her cousin  Annabelle both love Kindi Kids so they have been using them to play together which has been so lovely to watch and so great for them to act out their emotions.

Maintaining these friendships is also really going to help them return to school.

We have also been trying to keep to the same routine plan, getting up at the same times and maintaining the usual bedtime and meal times.

We do some activities that the preschool have sent us and read stories together.

We also made a little chart like they used in preschool to do the days of the Week, Month, Season and weather.

Moose Toys so kindly gifted Isabella a Rainbow Kate Kindi Kid and the Puppy Petkin Delivery Scooter.

We are always very grateful when we are gifted something and always give an honest review.

I knew these would be an instant hit with Isabella as she already has and loves her Marsha Mello Kindi Kid doll.

We also already have the Rabbit Petkin Shopping Cart and the Kitty Petkin Supermarket which I also highly recommend.



Kindi Kids have made some amazing activity cards which have been so useful for keeping up with our exercise.
I have linked the free activity cards for you to download.

We have been doing these along with our daily walks.

Isabellas favourite activity from the cards has been throwing things into a laundry basket. Perfect for developing her hand and eye coordination. It’s also a really good gross motor activity.


Rainbow Kate and Marsha Mello have been like Isabella’s best friends during lockdown and so we have tried to incorporate them into most of our learning activities.

We love sensory play and Isabella was really missing trips to the beach so we made our very own beach. Complete with water, sand and shells for Isabella and the Kindi Kids to enjoy.

One of our favourite things about the Kindi Kids is the amazing accessories them come with.
Each doll comes with two accessories and they are so detailed. We used the Slushi sparkle drink and strawberry as part of the picnic for the beach activity.


The dolls are absolutely beautiful and have huge sparkly eyes.
I love their cool funky outfits with matching shoes and hair accessories.

The dolls are 10 inches tall so a really good size for playing with. They can also stand on their own or sit.

The clothes are removable which is another cool aspect. Isabella loves taking Rainbow Kate’s crunchy out and brushing her colourful hair.

 


The Kindi kids Puppy Petkin Delivery Scooter is just so much fun.
I love how all the items are designed so that the dolls can stand alone on them. Each item has been clearly very carefully thought out.
The scooter comes with a compartment on the back to put your accessories in and it also has a little holder at the front to pop the dolls magic cups in.

If you can’t tell already, I’m a huge fan and even I love to play with them. They really remind me of some dolls I had as a child called Little Miss Make Up so bring back some lovely memories of my sister and I playing with our dolls.

I think these dolls are such a great buy and we will certainly be adding to our collection as they also do a Peppa mint, Jessi Cake and Donatina. Don’t you just love the names?

You can purchase them from Argos .

Rainbow Kate is a RRP of £25 and the Puppy Petkin Delivery Scooter is a RRP of £15 , really good value for money.

We also enjoy watching the Kindi kids episodes on YouTube and this has been great when I needed five minutes peace.

If you have any questions about them, we would be very happy to answer.

Thanks so much for reading and thank you to Moose Toys for allowing us this opportunity to review them.

 

My Three Little Strawberries

XXX

 

We would love you to share your tips or routines during lockdown with us in the comments section.

 

 

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Learning Resources – Jumbo Ocean Animals

Learning Resources – Jumbo Ocean Animals

Learning Resources very kindly asked us to pick a product to review and the Jumbo Ocean Animals have been on my wish list for ages so we were delighted to choose these.

First Impressions are they are much bigger than I thought which is amazing! They are so easy to grip because of their size. They feel so realistic and I love how detailed they are. You can really see all the prints and lines making them so nice and tactile, especially the octopus and turtle which gave me my first activity idea!

Ocean Animals – Playdough

I made up some Playdough in blue and green to represent the ocean and land or plant life.

I also added some shells and gems.

This created a fantastic sensory invitation play.

Isabella loved making an ocean for all the animals to go in and we pressed them down into the dough to leave impressions of the animals and due to their amazing detail the prints were so intricate.

 

 

 

 

 

Isabella played happily with this set up for 30 minutes non stop and gets it out everyday.

 

Ocean animals – Imaginative Play

Next Isabella decided herself to take them into the bath so I added a little blue food colouring and bio glitter to the water. She could not wait to get in!

Isabella loved making them swim up and down in the water and made cute little voices and animal noises for the. She acted out a game where the shark was chasing the turtle but the octopus saved the day!

I loved watching her use her imagination to create her own stories.

 

Ocean Animals – Tuff Tray

We all know I love a tuff tray so this was the perfect excuse for me to make one up.

I also decided this was the perfect opportunity to help make Isabella aware of all the plastic going not our oceans.

Yes these animals are plastic but they are not single use plastic and when we out grow them, We will be passing them on to Isabellas Pre school where I know they will get many more years of play due to their durable quality.

So I filled the tray with blue water and added some blue water beads to represent the plastic in the ocean. We acted out the animals eating the beads and then not feeling well. We talked about how they can also get trapped in the plastic.

We saved the animals by rescuing them with our Learning Resources tools and used the pipette to wash them down and feed them fresh clean water.

Isabella really likes these animals and I will definitely be buying more of the other Jumbo Animal sets that Learning Resources do.

Isabellas favourite animal is the baby shark and she takes it in the shower or bath every day and sings the “Baby Shark” song.

They are nice and light in weight for her to hold and she absolutely loves them so we highly recommend this set.

 

This pack comes in a good quality box containing six pieces 

-Whale

-Shark

-Seal

-Octopus

-Dolphin

-Turtle

You also get an animal fact sheet activity guide and some discussion starters.

 

RRP £28.50 from Learning Resources

Recommended for ages 3 – 10 (although even as an adult I love them)

As always thanks so much for reading and we would love to hear any comments you may have below.

My Three Little Strawberries

XXX

The other sets available are Jumbo Jungle, Zoo, Farm , Forest, Insects, Pets and Dinosaurs Animal sets

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Learning Resources – GeoSafari Jr. Critter Habitat Review

Learning Resources – GeoSafari Jr. Critter Habitat Review

Children love to be outdoors and it’s so benifical for them. They can explore the natural environment and there are so many learning opportunities for them.

The girls have always been into nature and love looking at bugs. I think this is great and always encourage it to minimise any fears they may have and also to teach them to be respectful to other creatures and their habitats.

 

 

 

 

We were super excited to review this GeoSafari Jr. Critter Habitat for Learning Resources.

First impressions were that it’s a great size as we have had bug collectors in the past but they are very small so you could only fit one bug in it.

The gallon sized clear container has 5 magnifying windows and it provides a safe ventilated place for the creatures with its breathable air holes.

One of my favourite features is that it provides such a clear view so children can really see inside and having five magnifying windows makes it perfect for more than one child. This encourages working together!

It has a rubber grip handle for carrying it when out on your adventures and the lid pops off easily to collect your creatures in it.

Its a wet and dry habitat  (water tight) making it perfect for collecting almost anything from flowers and leaves to tadpoles and frogs.

 

We first used it to examine a birds egg shell, we found that had fallen outside our house and Isabella loved getting to see it in the magnifying windows as she could really see all the speckles on it.

Next we decided to take it on an adventure to explore the outdoors. We took it to a lake and Isabella had so much fun using a net to try and catch some creatures to examine. We filled it with some water and even thought we didn’t manage to catch any creatures this time, it was still so much fun.

I must add that its super easy to clean it out!

 

We did catch some leaves and plants from the water and Isabella decided one of them was a creature and so she wanted to feed it. I love that she was also using her imagination. She did find the feeder a bit tricky to open herself so I helped her with this part.

We are taking it with us to the beach in a few weeks and I can’t wait to see what we might find to observe in it.

We are also going to fill it with mud and worms which will be amazing to see the worms moving around through the mud.

Overall this really is a fantastic Critter Habitat and I would definitely recommend it.

It’s such a great introduction to Stem learning and perfect for animal lovers. It encourages children to explore the outdoors and learn to care for other living things.

We are going to be storing it in our mud kitchen so its easy for Isabella to get any time she’s in the garden.

 

As with all our reviews, I would never recommend something I didn’t truly love and all words and opinions are our own.

We hope you enjoyed this review and as always if you have any questions we are very happy to answer them.

Recommended age 3+

RRP £20 and can be purchased from www.learningresources.co.uk

My Three Little Strawberries

                  xxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Learning Resources – Beakers Creatures Whirling Wave Reactor Review

Learning Resources – Beakers Creatures Whirling Wave Reactor Review

We have previously reviewed the Beakers Creatures – Liquid Reactor Super Lab and the Magnification Chambers sets and as we really enjoyed these we were delighted to get the chance to review the new addition to the Beakers Creatures sets.

The new Whirling Wave Reactor set certainly did not disappoint.

The girls love collectables and are always really excited to see what they will get. I love that these collectables are not just your average, get a toy inside an egg. It’s also an educational activity where they learn something from it and lasts a lot longer that just popping open an egg.

What you get inside the 12 Piece set 

Five piece Whirling Wave Reactor Chamber

One Reactor Pod with a mystery Beaker Creature

One Limited Edition Colour Creature

Two Classification cards

Two Mini-posters with amazing science facts

One Experiment guide

The girls found it super easy to put everything together and it only took one minute.

Colour-Changing Creature

First we tried the colour changing experiment and added some cold water to the chamber and popped the creature inside and spun it round using the crank.

Isabella loved watching it change colour then we put it in a bowl of warm water and watched it change colour again!

 

Beakers Creatures – Whirling Wave Reactor

 

First put the reactor pod into the reactor chamber and fill it with water.

Next turn the crank to trigger the whirling, bubbling reaction.

Keep turning until you start to see all of the pod dissolve.

Then for the fun part, revealing which creature you got!

(you may need to dip it into a bowl of water to wash off any excess)

Use the mini-poster to learn your creatures name.

This time we got “Slurpus” from the Dogstars collection in Series 2.

Lastly fill in your classification card and add them to your collection.

There are a further three experiments to complete with this set. So plenty to keep children engaged and so much fun to be had.

I really like this set and for a RRP of £16 I think this is a fantastic set, that can be used again and again. You can buy extra Reactor Pods for RRP £4 from series 1 and series 2 but you can also use the set for the other experiments without purchasing another Reactor Pod.

They are an amazing pocket money gift and my girls just love collecting them all and using them for small world play and putting them in the slime recipe from the other Beakers Creatures Sets.

If you are looking for a fun way to introduce your children to science then this is the set for you.

Thanks for reading and we look forward to bringing you more fun stuff soon!

Recommended for children ages 5+

My Three Little Strawberries

                   xxx

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