Most of this summer has been spent making the most of the wonderful weather outside and enjoying a #freerangesummer, but there have been times when we have played games and enjoyed indoor activities. So this is a brief overview of what we have been playing with this summer
Lite Brix
Lite brix are a construction toy from Character. They are based on the LEGO format, but the bricks are clear and once you have assembled your construction you add wires and a light system for the bricks to light up. This was right up Maxi’s street and he spent a couple of hours building the Lite Brix Lumie Racer.. It is great the way the four colour LEDs that come to life when you plug the battery power pack into the model. It makes for a really exciting build. This set was £30 and he had hours of fun with it, before other children played with it and one of my friends two year olds broke it unfortunately. However, the beauty of this is that he can put it back together.
We also have the Light Brix Lazer Copter, which is £19.99 and I think will be perfect for our screen free evenings as the nights draw in, as the lights look fab in the dark.
Both the boys really loved the Crystal Growing Kit from Hobbycraft, which costs £25. It is designed for older children and does contain chemicals which can be harmful and you need to have time and patience to make the crystals, which is something that MIni seriously lacks! The first issue we had is that you need to ensure that your deionised water (which you need to source) has to be warned to a certain temperature, so we had to buy a liquid thermometer online as we couldnt source one locally. By the time I had done this the boys initial excitement had worn off.
The kit did make for some interesting conversations about crystal structures and we spent one evening researching this on the computer and looking at salt and sugar under the microscope. Now the boys are at school I think this will get a lot more play as it is something they can start after school and continue with the next day.
The Human Body
As a family we LOVED this kit. It costs £27 from Hobbycraft, but is jam packed with things to do, games to play and experiments, such as building your own stethoscope and finding out about finger prints. It really tapped in to the boys imagination at 7 and 8. I think it was perfectly pitched for their age range. The kit is full of primary coloured based kit and is really engaging. It is not something you have to spend hours with all at once, as it is broken down in to different sections and covers the five senses. This has been returned to again and again over the summer and we still have more to do and use, plus it comes with a 48 page book. A super buy.
Puzzler Brain Games for the DS
This came in to its own on one of our many long road trips. It is perfect for all ages and both the boys, their cousin and the Frugals played with it. At under £12 it is a great value game for any DS owner. Rather than use it in main game mode, which is a 90 tournament designed to improve your brain, they played it in practice mode, which is more like accessing mini games. The 20 puzzles are based on training 4 different brain function categories – Visual, Word, Mathematical and Memory. During all the time it was played over the summer the boys never had the same content twice, which was pretty impressive.
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