The products in this post were sent in exchange for review. All opinions are honest and my own.

Marvel Battleworld

Moose absolutely loves superheroes. I know a lot of children do but with my child it’s next level. He watches the Marvel movies pretty much on repeat and plays with his action figures constantly. When he isn’t doing that he is making up stories and talking about battles. So yes, he is quite a fan!

He was absolutely delighted then to receive a Marvel Battleworld ball to review from Funko.

What’s inside?

Inside the Battleworld ball you will find

• 1 Hero, 1 Hero Card
• 5 Battle Cards
• 1 Thanostone (containing a mystery Hero)
• Instructions.
• 1 mystery Hero Card sealed in black plastic
• 1 Attack Die
• 5 Danger Tokens
• 1 Danger Coin

How do you play?

I will be honest, this is an easy game to play but it did take us a couple of goes at reading the instructions before it clicked. I would recommend watching this how to play video.

What did we think?

Moose really loved playing this game. Once we got the hang of it it was an easy and pretty quick game to play. You can play as a single player but I think it would be much more fun with multiple Battleworld balls. The little character are incredibly cute and well made – the detail is everything you would expect from a Funko figure.

Priced at just £6.99 I think that this would make a really great stocking filler and with it’s mix of collectible, blind bag style and fast paced game I could see it being a really popular toy.

Something Wild Game

Card games are always a big hit in our house. We love games that don’t take lots of time to put together. Even better are those games that don’t take long to play. Something Wild ticks both of those boxes. Better yet it comes with a cute little Funko character!

What’s inside?

Inside the box you will find

• 45 Character Cards
• 10 Power Cards
• 1 Funko Pop Character
• Instructions.

How do you play?

Something Wild! is a quick card game that feels a bit like a mix of Go Fish and Uno. The objective of the game is to play down a set of 3 cards of the same number/character or a set of 3 cards of the same colour in sequential order, and when this is accomplished you’re able to collect the Power card in play. When you’ve collected 3 of the 10 Power cards, you win the game.

What did we think?

I really enjoyed playing this game and I know Moose did too! It was also a hit with the teenagers. A good, quick game that has an air of familiarity about it which will appeal to the whole family. Definitely a great game to take on a holiday (remember those?)

Something Wild is available to buy from Amazon and prices start from £6.99 making it another great stocking filler idea.

When I was a little girl I owned a Tonka tractor. I have no clue how old I was when I got it but I remember it very well. Heavy, green and with it’s own trailer (good for ferrying around all manner of creatures). My brother would nab it at any given opportunity but despite his best efforts it always came back to me in perfect condition. Not a scratch on it. Ever.

Tonka has been around since the 1940’s. That means that in our family, Moose will be the 4th generation to play with toys from the Tonka brand. Quite impressive then that the brand doesn’t really appear to have strayed from it’s core products. Diecast metal vehicles which are built to last. To me, Tonka is one of those toys you don’t throw away. Rather, they get passed down. One of my aims for this year has been to ensure that I am choosing quality over quantity for Moose’s toy collection. Tonka definitely fits with that perfectly.

Tonka Micro Metals

What’s in the box?

Our pack contained 3 vehicles we could see which were a fire truck, a police cruiser and a garbage truck. It also contained some ‘Tonka Tough Dirt’ and …a mystery box!

If you know Moose you know how excited he gets about blind bag style toys so this aspect was a massive hit with him. Inside his mystery box he found a mini version of the Tonka dumper truck! He was very happy with this.

Each of these micro versions measures approx 4cm making them great for playing with at home but also when you are on the move. I always let Moose bring a little bag with his choice of toys when we go on holiday and these Micro Metals would be perfect.

The Tonka Micro Metals come in an emergency vehicles pack which we received and also a construction site pack which I am sure will be on Moose’s Christmas list this year. Each pack retails at around £10.

Tonka Metal Movers

What’s in the box?

We were lucky enough to receive the Metal Movers combo pack and a few of the Metal Movers mud rescue.

The Tonka Metal Movers combo pack contains a bright yellow bulldozer and dump truck. Both vehicles are, once again, really sturdy and feel as though they could take a lot of playing with. The detail on the vehicles is fantastic and they are easy to use. Moose really enjoyed filling the truck with the Tonka Tough Dirt and emptying it out again.

The Tonka Metal Movers Mud Rescue sets are a great idea and a little bit different in that the first thing your child needs to do is to use the little tools included to dig the vehicle out of the dirt! This set was priced a little lower than the others and I think would make great birthday party gifts or pocket money toys. Inside this set you will find the aforementioned tools, a vehicle, some cones and fences, some Tonka Tough Dirt and an awesome Mud Rescue medallion.

 What did we think?

This one was not a hard sell for me. I have loved the Tonka brand for a long time – these new Metal Movers sets only reinforced that Tonka is still a great brand which offers amazing quality toys which will last and last. Moose really loved playing with all 3 of the sets and he will definitely want to add to his collection now. He has also asked that we get some for his best friend – high praise from a 6 yr old indeed!

You can find Tonka Metal Movers in all good toy shops including JLP, Shop Direct and Amazon. Be sure to check out Tonka tough time for fun new activities and chances to win! 

Disclaimer: We were sent these SuperZings products for the purpose of this free of charge review. All opinions remain honest and our own.

Moose loves Superheroes and is also very partial to a blind bag not mention his passion for collectables. So, when a huge bundle of a toy ticking all of those boxes landed on our doorstep he was thrilled!

What are SuperZings

SuperZings are everyday objects and items transformed into Super Heroes and Dastardly Super Villains. They can be bought in several ways;

• Single figure blind bags priced at just 80p each making them the cheapest blind bags on the market! There are 80 figures to collect in the season 5 series. As with past series, there are hero SuperZings (Sky Runners, Air Wings or Flying Surfers) and there are villainous SuperZings (Lightning Raiders, Black Comets or Rocket Gang).

• SuperZing Skyracers. Each of these £4 blind bags contains a SuperZings character as well as a vehicle – each of these has it’s own cool features.

• SuperZings Mission Playsets. With an RRP of £15 they are a little pricier but you really get a lot of play value here. We received the Bank Assault Mission play set which comes with Agent Silverstar and villain Gold Hands. Moose loved the bank vault which you can blow open at the push of a button to reveal gold bars inside! We also received the Fire Strike set which comes with a fire engine and a helicopter which shoots “water”.

What did we think?

SuperZings seems to have really done their homework. Every single aspect of this collectable toy is appealing to my 5 yr old – and the price point is very appealing to me!

Moose loved the Hero Vs Villains game play so much. He’s spent hours playing out scenarios with the little figures. He even got some dice and created his own little battle game! He has returned to his SuperZings sets again and again since he received them and for the price they are I would be more than happy to buy more.

These products were gifted for the purpose of this post. All opinions remain honest and our own

Of all of the plans I had made for this year, becoming a full time teacher to my children was most definitely not top of the list – let’s be honest, it wasn’t even near the list.

Now that we are a few weeks into this home learning malarkey I am not exactly finding it easy but there have been a few tools that I have picked up along the way which seem to be really helping.

• I have my schedule written out and stuck to the fridge. That way everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing. A good thing about being at home is that the schedule can be loose. If we wake up on a Wednesday and its hot and sunny then we can make that our Saturday if we want to. I quite like that part of home learning and so do the children!
• On an average day we do PE with Joe at 9am to wake us up before we launch into any kind of learning. With everyone being at home so much more I think it makes a massive difference to how our day goes if we do something physical first
• I keep the snacks coming. I am led by my stomach and my offspring are no different. If they are hungry then nothing is going to go smoothly
• Most importantly:

Make learning fun

This is basically the most important thing I try to remember by far. Moose just responds so much more positively when we make learning into a game. A really easy way to do this of course is by actually playing games and nobody does educational games better than Learning Resources.

Learning Resources offered to send us a couple of their games to review and I jumped at the chance! I had seen both Sight Word Swat and Sum Swamp in the shops and I was interested to see how helpful they could be with Moose’s learning.

Sum Swamp

I love the idea behind this game. At first glance it is a fairly typical board game but this one has a twist! To play the game you have 3 dice to roll rather than 1. The 3 dice are 2 numbers and then one instruction dice with +/- on it. You roll all 3 and then you have to complete the sum shown on the dice to work out how many spaces to move.

There is a bit about halfway along on the board where you can get caught in a bit of a loop (which I do) but Moose finds this utterly hilarious.

The game itself doesn’t take long to play. It is suitable for 5+ which I think is about right. The game board is designed in bright colours with fab illustrations. It’s clearly laid out and we picked it up within 10 minutes of beginning to play. Moose asks to play this game everyday and we have actually begun to use the Sum Swamp dice for other games too!

Sight Word Swat!

Before my children started school I had no idea what a sight word was! It turns out that there is a list of words that our kids are expected to be able to recognise instantly and effortlessly, i.e. on sight. Some of these words can be sounded out phonetically, others need to be learned off by heart as they sound different than they look. The game – and our school – refers to these as ‘tricky words’. Sight Word Swat! aims to help your child to learn to do exactly that in the form of a fun game.

In the box

you will find 150 double-sided cards in the shape of flies featuring 300 different sight words. The cards are colour coded for five different phases, each with increasing difficult, and in addition all the harder ‘tricky’ words have been highlighted in bold and yellow.

We tend to play this with a mix of levels just because I find it helps Moose more. Plus it helps build his confidence! To play the game simply select your fly cards and lay them out on the table so that all players can see them. Then an adult would call out one of the words and the first player to find and swat that word wins. The beauty of this game is that it can be as long or as short as you want it to be. Set a time limit or a number of words. At the end of the game the players can read out their sight words to help reinforce that they know those words.

Moose did so much better at this than I had expected! He managed to find a good range of words and I think if he had kids his own age to play against it would have been fantastic fun. Unfortunately for him he played against his big sister. She didn’t go easy on him. Nonetheless he loves the game and I love how simple it is to play.

Learn more about Learning Resources

As well as creating some fabulous STEM toys and games, Learning Resources also have a website which offers a massive amount of boredom busting activities and ideas to keep your little ones focused both indoors and outdoors long after this Corona virus business has left us https://blog.learningresources.co.uk/free-resources-for-home-learning/

We are definitely going to be making good use of this weblink over the next few months I think. So many fab ideas and most using things we have laying around at home!