Gazillion 33-in-1 Incredibubble Wand Review

Today was Holly's 4th birthday party and we played host to a very wild group of 4 year old girls in our back garden. We had great fun playing outside and the star of the show was this amazing Gazillion 33-in-1 Incredibubble Wand which we used to create clouds of brilliant bubbles to chase and pop.

Tha Gazillion 33-in-1 Incredibubble Wand is so easy to use even for small people - simply pour a thin layer of the Gazillion preium bubble mixture into the tray, dip the wand and then wave the wand as slowly or as quickly as you like to produce gazillions on bubbles!  With 33 bubble wands in one wand head you quickly fill the air with bubbles.

Lara and Holly really enjoyed whirling around the garden creating bubbles and it was brilliant to see all of the faces beaming with smiles at Holly's party when we blew so many bubbles for them to chase.  Lara's technique of choice is to stand still and then whirl around in a circle until she gets dizzy.  Holly likes to wave the wand around more gently in a figure of eight.

The volume of bubbles is quite frankly astonishing.  Within seconds our entire back garden was full of bubbles and the girls were all running around trying to pop them.  Unlike a little pot of bubbles (your usual party bag fare) there is far less chance of sticky fingers having to dip in and out of a tiny pot because the wand itself has a nice long handle so you can stay well out of the way of the bubble mixture yourself.

If you are very careful you can also use this bubble wand to blow really big bubbles that are absolutely mesmerising - in the middle of the wand is a single round circle which can make long, wide bubbles that you'd never manage using an old-fashioned bubble wand.  The Gazillion Incredibubble wand really has taken our bubble-blowing antics to new heights.

The Gazillion 33-in-1 Incredibubble wand comes with a bottle of bubble mixture - Lara and Holly quickly used it up so it is good to know that you can buy 2l bottles of it at Argos.  Right now at Argos you can buy this 33-in-1 Incredibubble wand AND the Gazillion Incredibubble Wand (which makes super-sized bubbles as big as yourself) for just £19.99.

Summery Sand Art Ideas

We're loving the spring sunshine, getting in the mood for warmer weekends over the summer and so the girls have enjoyed doing some summery-themed craft activities together.  Sand art is one of the craft activities that both girls enjoy doing together.  Lara has now learned how to avoid getting sand EVERYWHERE but Holly on the other hand... sigh...needs a lot of assistance.  It is very easy to turn your floor into a sandpit if you let the kids play with coloured sand unattended!

This month Yellow Moon sent us some summer themed sand art picture cards and a selection of their neon coloured sand which has a great number of uses.

Sand-art pictures are sticky cards with a picture stamped into it.  When you peel away part of the coating you reveal the sticky behind and you can pour on sand that will stick to that part of the picture only.  Pour away the remainder (the bottles of sand come with a handy little funnel to make it easy to get the sand back into the bottle) and then move on to the next colour.

Lara has really got the hang of this and has enjoyed meticulously filling in these seaside pictures with lots of brightly coloured sand.  Holly has joined in and is learning the skill but often forgets to pour the excess sand away after use so we have built up rather a collection of generic "rainbow coloured" sand for use in other activities.

Another way of really showing of coloured sand is to fill up little decorative bottles with layers of different colours.  Lara and Holly actually sat and planned the arrangement of colours they wanted to use for these bears (planning doesn't normally feature highly in Holly's skillset).  Once the bears were full the girls chose to use them as ornaments to decorate their new rainbow-themed bedroom.

All of these sand art activities for children can be found for sale at Yellow Moon - the biggest kids craft store you can think of!  Don't forget that you can earn between 5% and 20% cashback for your school on most Yellow Moon purchases.

Leapfrog Imagicard Letter Factory Adventures

Both Lara and Holly are really enjoying using the Leapfrog Epic at present.  They use it a lot more than they have done any previous incarnation of the Leapfrog kids tablet and I think this has a lot to do with the speed and responsiveness as well as the wider range of games/apps on it.  Our recent discover is the Leapfrog Imagicard games which are interactive card games that come to life when you use your Leappad or Leapfrog epic to take a picture of the card to unlock fun educational games and activities.

Letter Factory Adventures is a Leapfrog Imagicard game suitable for children from 4 to 7 years and I can confirm that both Lara (nearly 7) and Holly (nearly 4) are playing it, enjoying it and gaining from it.  The game features cards with the recognisable Leapfrog characters posing with different letters of the alphabet.  Different cards unlock different games related to the letter sound.

For Holly, the spelling pirate game is perfectly pitched - change the letters to make new words while keeping the primary vowel sounds the same.  This is a great way of learning that the vowel letters make a consistent sound even in different words.  Even just seeing these first words on the screen is great practice for her to see and recognise how familiar words are written.

I've enjoyed sitting with her playing rhyming games - I need to read and help direct her on occasions but it is fun to listen and identify matching sounds, or to match the letter on the card to letters on the screen.

Lara, being a clever bean, quickly worked out that she didn't actually need the cards to be able to play most of the games in Letter Factory Adventures.  Lara has spent quite some time playing this game which is interesting because I wouldn't have said she necessarily needed to practice her spelling, vocabulary or basic vowel sounds but there is obviously something there that brings her back to play.  There are little games and videos and so many different things to do in this game.  I think Lara enjoys the challenge of trying to get all the answers to puzzles right, first time, within a time limit so even though the puzzles themselves seem easy to her, there is further skill needed!

The Letter Factory Adventures Imagicards come in a metal presentation case.