Mummy & Moose
clapping, napping and yapping our way through the day

Christmas Gift Ideas – For Children

Let’s face it, Christmas is all about the children. With that in mind here is a selection of what we will be playing with this Christmas morning. Hopefully you will see something here to inspire you, it can be so hard to know what to buy!

Make your own Choc Ice with Mr Frosty, the coolest guy around!

This kit comes with everything to create your own Mr Frosty & Penguin frozen chocolate figures.Fill the 3D moulds with your favourite yoghurt flavour and place in the freezer. Melt your chocolate in Mr Frosty s igloo, then dip your Mr Frosty frozen shape in the melted chocolate. Place on the drying station and watch your Mr Frosty Choc Ice come to life!

Zoo imagination biscuits, which are both gluten and lactose-free, are the perfect stocking fillers this Christmas, and are treats that now the whole family can enjoy. A great choice for little ones who perhaps aren’t so keen on chocolate. They are available from Tesco.

There’s a new surprise waiting inside every Baby Secrets single pack. Each bath tub opens to reveal a surprise Baby Secrets figure with a different personality – which one will you find? Then fill the tub with water, and watch the baby’s nappy change colour when put in – will yours be a boy or a girl?

 

Hands down the best educational game for older children that I have played this year. If you have a child of 8+ then I recommend you buy this. Players race against the clock to form as many words as possible using the element symbol tiles, adding together the atomic numbers of each tile used to create a word. For example : Ba Na Na = Banana = 78 points! Amazingly there are over 10,000 words that can be created using combinations of the element symbols of the FReNeTiC game board.

This Discovery Nightlight 20cm Illuminated Globe

is easy to use, rotate and learn with, this illuminate globe shows children how the world spins on its axis! It also illuminates and shows countries in colour blocks and names seas/oceans and capital cities, perfect for exploring and learning more about our world!

This Discovery nightlight globe is a STEM toy which encourage children to develop skills in the core disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Suitable for ages 8 years and up. Fun for all the family.

I love this range of DC Super Hero Girls.

Unleash your power and explore your inner hero with DC Super Hero action dolls! Inspired by the powerful students of DC Super Hero High, the DC Super Hero Girls action dolls are ready for powerful fun.

The Incredibles 2 was a big hit in our house so I know Moose is going to love this toy! Jack-Jack comes with batteries too so there is one less thing to remember on Christmas morning. Simply flick his switch from Try Me to On and let the fun begin!

Press Jack-Jacks tummy to hear him giggle. Press some more and see his other powers! Hold his belly to make Jack-Jack “explode” into ultimate power mode – all colours, lights and sounds are activated

Count your final sleeps to Christmas with Smiggle’s 12 day advent calendar. Behind each door awaits either a prank or treats! Moose is going to love playing jokes on us all, it’s going to be an interesting month!

I love the bits and bobs Smiggle has for sale.

I like that they are fun designs and I think you would be hard pushed to find a child who couldn’t find something they like. Smiggle is a firm favourite in our house.

Gel-a-Peel allows you to express yourself through your own designer creations. Create gel fashions, patches, accessories and jewellery using the Gel-a-Peel Fashion Station. It’s so easy and fun. Just pick your stencil design, gel, squeegee and peel. Includes accessory hardware for three clutches and two pairs of earrings.

Project Mc2 is a team of smart and seriously cool girls who use their love of science and their spy skills as they go on missions for secret organization, NOV8. They are real girls with real skills ready to take on anything. Watch new episodes of the project Mc2 original series, only on Netflix. Adrienne Atoms next mission is to use her cosmetic chemistry skills to formulate the ideal look for saving the world. Formulate your own perfumes with project Mc2 perfume maker. You can perform this same cool steam. Experiment at home using just household items again and again.

I always like to include something for the children to do at Christmas.

I am really looking forward to trying this out with Moose. He loves birds and I think he’s going to enjoy playing with The Window Bird Feeder. The large portal with two-way mirror allows you to observe birds without disturbing them. The feeder is made from quality components and easy to install, refill and clean. Full instructions and a garden bird guide are also included in the kit.

Now Bess is 12 it’s getting a little harder to find “toys” for her to play with, but Interplay have us covered with fab labs.

Create the latest cool fashions by adding vibrant and trendy colours to clothes and accessories with Interplay’s Designer Tie Dye Kit. It is fun and easy to do and the 8 page instruction booklet explains the techniques to get the latest trendy looks. The Kit contains 4 dyes in applicator bottles, rubber bands and PVC lab gloves. There are enough ingredients to dye the equivalent of 5 T Shirts

The Best Friends Style Lab lets you customise your look with this jumbo pack of fabulous styling activities that are fun to do with friends and great for parties or sleepovers. Add colour to your hair with 3 vibrant, easy to wash out hair shadows – Design salon style nails with 6 solvent free varnishes – Create glamorous glitter tattoos with 4 glitter colours and over 25 cool designs.

Get the latest festival look and create beautiful face art with the new FabLab festival face tattoos! Contains over 12 gorgeous temporary tattoo designs especially formulated to be easy to apply and easy to remove with the oil provided. Also includes glittery tattoos to customise and to add sparkle to your look! Great fun to do and perfect for festivals, parties and sleepovers!

Moose is going to love getting creative with the Little Brian range. I really enjoy playing with paints and chalks but to be able to have messy play without the mess. Well, that has to be a Christmas miracle!

I have some plain white T Shirts at the ready so that Moose can get busy with the fabric paint sticks too!

This might seem like an odd choice for a house with no bath

But the range from Zimpli Kids which includes Gelli Baff, Slime Baff and Snoball Play will be perfect for some Tuff Spot fun – preferably outdoors of course! The idea of a snoball fight after our Christmas lunch seems like a good one to me!

 

We always stock up on sweet treats over Christmas but it’s nice to have a change from chocolate and Swizzels fit the bill perfectly. Everyone has their favourites, mine are Parma Violets – unfortunately they are also Bess’s favourite too!

Toy Story 4 is going to be huge in 2019 and Mr Potato Head is a classic. He never goes out of fashion and is a great educational toy.

If you have a little one who has an interest in nature, the Living World Pocket Microscope might be the perfect choice. Small enough to fit in your pocket, but powerful enough to make an ant look the size of an antelope!

Orchard toys have loads of great puzzles and games for key stage 1 aged children and older.

Is there anything more Christmassy than Pigs in Blankets?

I found this game by Orchard Toys in our local Aldi for less than £5!

Moose loves imaginary play and he has a few dolls now but this one I think will be a firm favourite. Baby Born cries real tears, goes to the toilet (in his potty hopefully) and even eats food! He comes with 11 accessories including feeding bowl and spoon, nappy, bottle, dummy, birth certificate and bracelets.

Dino Dump: The Prehistoric Kids Game with a Smelly Twist Introducing one of the newest items in Big Potato’s range of games for kids. It’s called Dino Dump, it’s a kids game for age 6 and up and it’s based on the classic adult card game Sh*thead. This time around, we’ve cleaned up the name, added some cheeky dinosaurs and made it about a hundred times easier to learn. We even added a bunch of scratch-n-sniff dino-poo forfeit stickers – just to keep things interesting. The aim of the game is to lose all of your Dino Cards as fast as possible.

From My Little Pony and Paw Patrol to Star Wars and Shimmer & Shine – the fun range of character illumi-Mates from Spearmark will be a welcome treat for little ones this Christmas.

The power is yours!

What do you get when you combine the incredible adventures of the Avengers: Infinity War heroes with Mitre’s legendary footballs? The best football in the universe… or at least we think so! Go to battle with your friends in the park – shoot and score, with this iconic Marvel Mitre ball.

These books by Jenny Ford are sure to appeal to any little bookworm. With a great adventure, lovely illustrations and even some blank pages for your child to plan their own story, they would make an excellent gift choice.

Mojimoto are talk back characters that will repeat what you say in their own funny voice! They can also lip-sync when they hear talking or music. Their eyes and mouths move when they talk or sing. Each Mojimoto also has a ring so they can be attached to your belt or backpack and you can take them wherever you go. With 8 different styles of Mojimoto’s to choose from, you can pick the one that best suits your mood!

Learning Resources Playfoam Pals Wild Friends 2-Pack. With this fun Playfoam Pals Set, young learners dig into the Playfoam to discover their new animal friends hidden inside! There are 12 Playfoam Pals Wild Friends to collect with a super-rare golden, endangered animal critter to find too! Each pet has a pop-apart body and head, for mixing & matching and creating brand new species. Once children have discovered their Playfoam Pal, they can use the Playfoam to build perches, nests, beds and more for their new pet! Playfoam is a completely mess free creative play resource that is great for sensory play and helps develop fine motor skills for little hands.

A personalised storybook is always a really popular gift.

This one from Bang On Books even allows you to add a photo of your child inside!

Christmas pyjamas are one of our little Christmas traditions and I love the set we received recently from La Coqueta. I think that the packaging would make it a great gift choice! You can see more here

Some of the products shown were sent in exchange for inclusion. All opinions remain my own.

Asus Zenbook

Now that Bess is in year 8, she really needs a device to help with schoolwork and studies. I did wonder originally whether I should just let her use my (now ancient at 5 years old) laptop but it is slow and a bit cumbersome due to it’s size. Bess has worked really hard this year and has an amazing attitude to school (and life generally). So, when we were asked recently whether we would like to try out the new Asus Zenbook UX410U I, of course, said yes!

asus zenbook

The Asus Zenbook UX410U is a lot smaller than my old thing. It’s a really pretty grey colour which when it catches the light looks a little purple. Purple is her favourite colour so I know Bess is going to love it!

The Zenbook has a 14″ screen so it’s small enough to slip into a backpack or bag without it weighing you down. It weighs just 1.4kg. This is a great device for using at home or taking along with you to be able to get work done on the go. With up to 8 hours battery life I can imagine it would be very comfortable to use at our local cafe.

The slimline design of the Asus Zenbook gives it a great aesthetic. The NanoEdge display means that you have a great field of view. There is very little wasted space around the edges of the screen. This makes it perfect for watching box sets or movies. Or in my daughters case Hamilton. So much Hamilton.

The Asus has an aluminium (rather than plastic) casing which adds to the feel of quality. Along with a combo audio jack, there’s a full-sized HDMI connector plus USB 3.1 and USB Type-C ports on the left-hand side. An SD card slot and two further USB 2 ports sit on the right. Asus tucks the speakers under the front lip of the laptop, and they’re worthy of the Harman Kardon branding – loud, clear and detailed.

I am not so keen on the keyboard. For me, the keys seem a little large? Maybe the keys on my old thing are on the small side though so it might just be personal preference. That said, they are fine to type with and backlit. I have heard murmurs about there being issues with the Zenbook’s touchpad. I haven’t found it to be a problem at all.

The Asus Zenbook UX410U was really easy to set up. The power button is right next to the delete button though. Guess which one I accidentally hit.. The Zenbook sprang to life and was soon talking me through password set ups and the like with the aid of Cortana!

Key Features

Up to 8 hours battery life
Light and portable at 1.4kg
Intel® Core™ i3 processor – for work & entertainment
4GB RAM – run 3 to 6 things like streaming & work docs
128GB SSD offers plenty of storage & super-fast loading

I think Bess is going to be absolutely over the moon with this laptop and I am even tempted to get another to replace mine! It has everything you would expect from a laptop in the mid range bracket and I am sure it will help Bess with her studies and socialising!

I received this product in exchange for a review. Opinions are honest and my own.

FReNeTiC review

My knowledge of the periodic table is summed up in 2 points. 1) I know that Sheldon and Leonard have a periodic table shower curtain in The Big Bang Theory and 2) I know I don’t know enough about the periodic table.

That said, aside from a couple of questions on University Challenge I don’t believe I have ever had cause to use knowledge of the periodic table in my general adult life. However. We were recently sent a board game called FReNeTiC to review which is themed around the periodic table. I must admit that due to my aforementioned almost complete ignorance I was worried about how well I would fare against my opponents.

Spoiler alert: I won.

FReNeTiC

The idea of FReNeTiC is that it’s a word game with a difference. But make no mistake, despite its periodic table theme it is much more about words than science.

Play is started by player 1 choosing 8 tiles and placing them on their corresponding square on the board. All players then attempt to make words using the tiles on the board before the timer runs out. Player 2 then chooses 4 tiles and all players again attempt to make words from tiles on the board. Scores are added up using the atomic numbers on the tiles used.

Play carries on until somebody reaches 1000 points.

I really like this game. It might be my favourite board game of 2018 actually. I am in favour of toys and games which point toward STEM learning and we found that FReNeTiC prompted Bess to ask questions about the elements. I also like that you could quite possibly learn a fair amount about the periodic table almost incidentally really.

…..and maths, too

So as well as using our grey matter to find words. FReNeTiC also encourages learning about the elements and because the atomic numbers tended to be some pretty big numbers, Bess also got a bit of math practise too. This is a great educational game. I would definitely recommend it.

FReNeTiC is available from Amazon and John Lewis as well as lots of other shops.

We were sent a copy of the game to try it out and give our honest opinion.

Playfoam Pals

Because my work involves being a bit creative and effectively playing with what Moose refers to as “grown up playdough”. I really quite like it when I find a toy that the children can sit up to the table and play with alongside me. Playfoam ticks pretty much all boxes where that kind of a toy is concerned.

Playfoam is a super lightweight non toxic playstuff which resembles polystyrene balls (think the inside of beanbags). They are coloured and they smoosh together but they never go that horrible murky grey colour. Playfoam is sticky but not in a sticks to everything and never be able to clean it up way. It is pleasantly sticky. If that’s a thing.

SURPRISE

Moose really like the blind bag aspect of this toy. Within the Playfoam is a creature. There are 12 to collect and included is a little tick sheet so you can mark them off as you go. We were lucky enough to find a golden creature too!

I really liked this toy and I could see it making a really good stocking filler. It is definitely something I will be looking out for in the shops for Moose. Despite trying to think of any cons I really can’t. It’s easy to play with, pretty clean and it encourages imagination!

 

Christmas Pyjamas – La Coqueta

I am determined that this year that our Christmas will be more about being than about buying.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The children love toys and gifts and of course they will have some but I am trying to concentrate my efforts on the other “stuff”.

Family is very important (just as well, we don’t have a small one) and growing up there were things we did every year and I remember them fondly. Hopefully one day I will be able to give my own children some memories like that.

One of the things we do every year is to give the children a pair of new Pyjamas. I love Christmas pyjamas and over the colder months my lot seem to want to come home from school and get straight into their PJ’s and dressing gown. Who can blame them?

La Coqueta kindly sent Moose a pair of their pyjamas for him to try out. I really love how well packaged they were. Wrapped in tissue paper and presented in a cotton drawstring bag.

The detailing on the pyjamas is really lovely. The red gingham with a little bit of green and white reminds me of candy canes.

I think I will always prefer the traditional pyjama style to the more contemporary alternatives. I don’t mind clothing with characters on it but I think they have their place and besides, the traditional ones always look nicer in photos. It’s all about the ‘gram!

Moose loved his new La Coqueta pyjamas. The material they are made from is a lightweight cotton but they seem to keep him warm. They are machine washable but don’t tumble dry them. He loves the little pockets and he has stashed many small toys in them already.

I really rate these pyjamas highly. They would make a lovely gift and I will definitely be using La Coqueta in future!

 

we received the featured product in exchange for our honest opinion.