Toy Reviews

Spring is here, and toysandbears.com have some brilliant toys and games available to keep the children busy, and also help with their development and learning. We tried out the Life Cycle Wheel, which is very different from other toys I’ve seen before. It is a unique idea, which makes life cycles really easy for children to understand in a hands on simple way.

The set is made up of a wheel, with a magnifying window, and six sets of five cards which take you through all the life cycle stages of various organisms like caterpillar to butterfly, the stages of a puppy growing into a dog, an apple into an apple tree and more.

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Orchard Toys have so many brilliant games to help support children’s learning and development. Over the years, I have played many of these games with each of my children as they are such a fun and simple way to help reinforce all of the learning concepts that they need as they go through school.

We were sent the following games which have all been ideal for my 4 year old daughter N. She loves playing games and doesn’t even realise that while she is having fun playing, she is also practising so many important skills.

All four of these games from Orchard Toys are ideal for working on numeracy skills and are perfect for children like N who will be starting reception in September.

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Rainbow Colours is a brilliant educational tool which introduces children to the concept of playing music in such a fun and accessible way, while also keeping them active. We were sent the Giant Piano to review, and this has been great fun for the kids both indoors and outdoors.

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We love the Magicube range from Geomag. My 4 year old daughter N has enjoyed many products from the Magicube range over the past couple of years, and they are toys which are continuously pulled out and played with again and again by N, and her friends. We recently tried the Magicube Animal Shapes set, which is something a little different from our other Magicube sets but just as fun.

Smart-playing has always been at the heart of the Swiss-based brand, Geomag, who promote learning by playing activity through ingenious magnetic toys.  It’s common sense that learning by playing is necessary for our children but making it fun can be challenging! Currently unable to play with friends and with screen time most likely to be dominating their daily lives, a variety of developmental skills and their ability to partake in exciting experiments is limited. But with parents spending more time at home too, the new Magicube Shapes magnetic construction toys are a powerful tool to develop those skills together.

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Playmobil is a fantastic toy for imaginary play, allowing children to explore different worlds and get lost in stories and their imagination. My 4 year old daughter N loves Playmobil, and her brothers also used to love these toys when they were younger. We were sent a couple of products from the Playmobil Zoo range to review, and these are already well loved in our house, so we were not disappointed.

The toys from the Playmobil Zoo range that we tried out, are the Lion Enclosure (above left) and the Zoo gift set (right). As with all Playmobil, these can be easily mixed and matched and combined with any other sets you want to get from the range, to expand your playful world.

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Magna-Tiles are one of our favourite open ended toys for the kids. They are brilliant for imaginary play, building and exploring. Over the years, we have always had sets of Magna-Tiles and when I am playing with these with my younger child, even the older kids can’t resist getting involved and putting something together. They are just so tempting and fun. Magna-Tiles are very appealing with their translucent colours, but recently we were sent a set of the new Magna-Tiles Stardust to review, and they are even more pretty. Magna-Tiles with added glitter, and even mirror pieces.. they are gorgeous to look at and to play with.

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With the kids spending so much time at home these days, having a variety of toys can make our lives so much easier. This especially applies right now during half term. Recently, I came across the Maqio Toys website and was so impressed with the range of toys available – and even more so with the bargain prices for many of these toys. If you are looking to find your children something new, and want to pick up a good deal then you should definitely have a browse around their site and see what catches your eye. We will have a discount code to share with you at the end of this post, to help you get an even better deal.

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Totem Infernal Power is a fun new challenge game from Character Toys, where you have to race to spin and stack all five spinning tops and watch them light up. The game is challenging and addictive, and great for family fun as you race each other to see who can complete the challenge fastest, or who can manage to stack more of the spinning tops.

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