I Heart Bedtime is a book in the Martha and the Bunny Brothers series and is a fun book for both children and adults (I do love it when a children’s book manages to connect with the parents reading, as well as the children). In it, Martha has to cajole her younger brothers into getting to bed and to sleep so that she can spend a bit of special time with her favourite babysitter. Martha uses lots of tricks that will be familiar to parents everywhere and her little brothers use tricks that will be familiar to most small children (going up and down stairs again and again to get thing after thing after thing, for example).

The pictures are simple, yet also full of new details to discover on each reading. And children are naturally drawn to Martha and her brothers and want to know more about them.

We did attempt to do one of our videos for this, though it may take a fair bit of patience to sit through the whole thing (fitting, perhaps, for the subject matter). LaLa was keen to act it out, and RoRo a little reluctant, though she did decide to join in further into the story! There were a couple of interruptions, too, so it is a disjointed (to say the least) video.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some, if not all of our video contribution to the blog tour and we highly recommend I Heart Bedtime by Clara Vulliamy. And you should absolutely follow Clara on Twitter – she always has something fabulous to say!

We’re taking part in another blog tour this week. This time it’s for this rather lovely crafty book by Donna Wilson. It’s called Creative Creatures and it’s full of crafty creature making projects, with varying degrees of difficulty – some are OK for pre-schoolers to have a go at, others will require good sewing skills, for example.

We got to pick one of the crafts to have a go at. The girls have bookmarked quite a few they’d like to try, but we settled on the Mitten Kitten’s finger puppets, which is a pretty good one for young children to have a go at.

I think RoRo (6) would have been able to measure and cut the templates out, but she chose for me to do this, so that she and LaLa (3) could just get on with decorating the puppets and devising a puppet show. Before we started, the girls decided they wanted to do Goldilocks and the Three Bears and so they would need three bears, one goldilocks and some woodland creatures.

I was a little concerned that the measurements must be wrong, but we did a test one and it turns out they are absolutely perfect for little fingers. I made some bigger ones to fit my fingers, too, though. I cut out a whole bunch of rectangles in different coloured card, so that they could pick and choose which they wanted to use.

LaLa made three blue bears and RoRo made Goldilocks (including adding hair made from post-it notes). I made an owl, a cat and a tree.

The girls then got a little bored and went off to play, so I thought I’d make some furniture. While I was doing this, they wandered back and got really into making furniture, too, so we ended up with four scenes – the woods, the kitchen, the living room and the bedroom. RoRo made a wardrobe and a television and LaLa made pillows for the bed and a picture for the bedroom wall. I loved how they really got into it and started having their own ideas for what to do – I think the best crafts are one that inspire children’s imaginations.

And then, when we were done, we made a video of the puppet show. OK, we made two videos. The girls had to swap characters and do it all again. LaLa did a whole version by herself this morning, too and then continued playing with the finger puppets for ages (another sign of a good craft – if the results of it last and are not consigned to the recycling box within a day).

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Version 1

RoRo plays Goldilocks and the woodland creatures; LaLa plays the three bears.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Version 2

LaLa plays Goldilocks and RoRo plays the three bears.

I hope you enjoyed our little show. And do go and visit the rest of the blogs in the tour this week. Zoe, at Playing by the Book kicked off the week with her and her girls trying out the Mitten Kitten. And Maggie at Red Ted Art tried out Olive Owl’s Kite. I’m excited to see what everyone else has tried.

Last month I did a fairly big reorganise and sort of the toy area in the living room. There were some immediate benefits, which included the girls playing with toys they’d forgotten about, and broken toys being thrown away rather than causing upset.

They’re still enjoying playing with toys and games they’ve forgotten about and their latest thing is playing with all the ponies and dinosaurs and creating some rather complex-sounding (I don’t listen intently, I have to admit, just catch the odd part of a conversation) live stories with them. Sometimes it seems that they are just playing out normal family life with them (“It’s time to go to bed now. Let’s read a story.” “Breakfast time!” “OK. Now it’s time to go to school”), but at other times they have adventures (“Today we’re going to go to the South Pole.” “Don’t move! I’ll come and rescue you!”). This is lovely to witness and there seem to be a few less arguments (mostly because I think RoRo has all the ponies and LaLa has all the dinosaurs, and they can play separately and come together now and then, rather than get all tied in knots about who is making the decisions). But it’s been rather annoying to have to negotiate a floor covered in (often intricately organised) small animals and try very hard not to tread on and break any of them.

This morning, however, I popped my head round the living room door to tell the girls that they had five minutes before they would have to put their shoes on and discovered them tidying up. All the blankets and cushions on the floor were put away (the blankets not terribly neatly, but that’s hard for me, even), as were the tents. The desk and chair were put back where they go. And then, the best bit of all for me… LaLa put all the animals back in their basket (and the dinosaurs back in their bucket). But not only did she do that; she also put the basket back on the shelf in the right place. Sadly, it was a little spoiled by RoRo putting her animals in a messy pile on the sofa (to her, if the floor is clear, then the room must be tidy) and then having a minor meltdown about LaLa putting the animals away, because they were her ‘collection’. I did manage to explain to her that she shouldn’t tell LaLa off for doing something good like that, but she could express that she was upset about it and why. Hopefully that sunk in!

The point of this rambling post, however, is that one of the benefits of having very organised toys is that the children are more likely to tidy up – because they know where everything goes and it’s easy to access. Yay! (Now, I really should do the rest of the house some time this year.)

Lunchtime by Rebecca Cobb, which we reviewed a while ago, is coming out in paperback. To celebrate this launch we’re taking part in a blog tour.

We decided to make a video dramatisation of the story. We printed some pictures from the book and cut them out – a table mat (like the tablecloth in the book), the lunch and dinner, and the Crocodile, Bear and Wolf (which we stuck onto straws to make them into puppets). We had lots of fun doing this and ended up with four different versions. We couldn’t really choose one overall, so we’re showing you them all. The girls have taken turns being the little girl in the story and we have two versions that follow the text of the story (more or less) and then two versions that are free interpretative dramatisations (otherwise known as ‘making it up’). As always, the videos aren’t brilliant quality and have lots of wobble and rubbish sound, but hopefully you’ll enjoy them anyway! If you look at our You Tube channel, we have quite a lot of picture book videos of one kind of another – reading the story, acting the story out or just talking about what we like about the story.

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 1: LaLa as little girl; RoRo as animals

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 2: RoRo as little girl; LaLa as animals

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 3: Improvised dramatisation: LaLa as little girl; RoRo as mum

Lunchtime dramatisation: Version 4: Improvised dramatisation: RoRo as little girl; LaLa as mum

We love this book and would thoroughly recommend it!

Please visit the other blogs in the blog tour for the rest of the week:

Tuesday 5 February: Slummy Single Mummy

Wednesday 6 February: Rhoda Reviews

Thursday 7 February: Really Missing Sleep

Friday 8 February: Monsters Fun House

Saturday 9 February: Jennifer’s Little World

Disclaimer: We have received a copy of the hardback and the paperback of this book from the publisher, but we only present our honest opinions about books – and join in with fun events like blog tours, if we love the book. We hope you love this and other picture books as much as we do.

After Christmas, I continued by spending an evening going through the toy corner in the living room. I ended up with a binbag full of broken or unusable toys and little bits from toys that could not be reunited with their owners. I also have two large boxes of toys for the charity shop, though, since they’re still sitting in the basement, I shall take them to playgroup’s jumble sale next month to help with the fundraising efforts (we need to raise around £30,000 to update the building which is almost at the end of its life!). I took out baby/toddler toys like shape sorters and pop up toys and a few other things that the girls don’t tend to play with.

Then I used some small colourful baskets I picked up in Homebase and sorting some of the bigger baskets into smaller categories, so that they could be more easily played with. There are now small baskets for:

• toy food
• cooking utensils and crockery
• other role play toys (e.g. medical equipment and tools), though I would have liked to split that down some more, but run out of baskets
• wild animals
• domestic and farm animals
• Happyland people and animals.

The bigger baskets in the unit contain transport, toy computers and there is a “miscellaneous” basket, which is where children and Chris are supposed to put anything they’re not sure where it goes. The green stool contains barbies and barbie accessories and the orange one contains bags. The bucket has wooden blocks in it, as they do still enjoy building towers and walls out of blocks.

And there’s also the big box of Lego Duplo (we need a small box for normal Lego now, though, as we have various small kits dotted around the house and I’m now frequently finding little bits of Lego under foot!

And I moved all the board games (and card games and puzzles) into the cupboard. And we no longer have big, overflowing baskets on top of the cupboard and blocking the daylight.

This is one of those tasks I’ve been meaning to do for ages and it only took one evening (well, plus the cuddly toy relocation).

One of the best things about doing a toy declutter and sort out is that the girls rediscover toys they’d forgotten about or can more easily play in new ways.

Here, the girls have made a cafe, using two of the boxes (and the various stools).

And LaLa was particularly pleased to have the HappyLand bits and pieces more accessible and easy to find. (Previously, all the HappyLand people and animals were in a big “animals and people” basket, and it took a lot of scrabbling to find them.)

I do, of course, have a bunch of other similar decluttering and sorting projects I’d like to do and it would be nice to try to do at least one a month, if not two a month, if possible, but I’m not going to make any promises. Work is getting busier again now, to the point where I’ve had to work a good few evenings recently, so there might not always be an evening to set aside. I am finding my mental health suffers if I don’t get some drawing and painting done regularly – ideally every day – so I don’t want to devote too many evenings to decluttering and sorting.

At the top of my current list are:

• LaLa’s clothes – box up all the clothes that are genuinely too small for her (she’s still squeezing into leggings and tops that say 18 months!), get down the next box of RoRo’s old clothes for her, build one of the cubey units to go in her room and keep trousers, tops and jumpers in there instead (in the boxes that used to be on top of the cupboard in the living room) and use the small drawers in her wardrobe for underwear and pyjamas
• children’s books – give little tiny books and most board books to charity, highlight some of the great picture books in the The reorganised book corner, um, two years ago! bookcase, sort chapter books and story collections out so that RoRo can find them easily, set aside all the learning to read books for LaLa who is really on the verge of digging in properly to them
• filing – get a filing cabinet and get back on top of business and household filing – and throw out the old stuff that we’re not obliged to keep.

None of these are huge projects and each should be doable in an evening, with a bit of time during the day to put things back in their room. I’m not going to set a deadline for these, though, because that doesn’t seem to work. I’ll just keep them on my radar and try to them soon.

Have you been doing any sorting and decluttering this month? Do you find the urge to do this kind of thing in January?

The Polar Express (Warner Bros.)

DVD: The Polar Express

Publisher/manufacturer: Warner Bros.

RRP: £13.99

Publisher’s Blurb

It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re about to roller-coaster up and down mountains, slip-slide over ice fields, tetter across mile-high bridges and be served hot chocolate by singing waiter more astonishing than any you can ever imagine. You’re on The Polar Express!

Tom Hanks stars in and Robert Zemeckis directs this instant holiday classive filmed in dazzling performance-capture animation that makes every home magical.

What we thought

This is a lovely Christmas film. I found the animation style (very realistic, ‘performance capture’) a little jarring at first but, within about ten minutes, I forgot about this and enjoyed the film. It’s a perfect film to sit down to as a family at the start of December (or whenever you start getting Christmassy). And it’s an enjoyable film to watch through the year, too. It’s a good film to reaffirm a belief in Santa Claus, too, if you have a child who has started to doubt!

Would we recommend it?

Thoroughly recommend it, and I’d probably be happy to pay the £13.99 RRP for it, though Play.com has it available for £5.64 at the moment. It’s also available in 3D Blu-ray if you have a player that can play that, which Amazon currently has available for £14.00.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this DVD by Warner Bros., but the opinions are our own.

Chameleon Crunch (Mattel Games)

Game: Chameleon Crunch

Publisher/manufacturer: Mattel Games

RRP: £19.99

Recommended age: 4 years up

Publisher’s Blurb

A Great Learning Game for pre-schoolers

This adorable, bright-blue chameleon can walk, talk and “eat” bugs — and he sure is hungry. But he’s very picky about the insects he eats. pre-schoolers will love playing Chameleon Crunch, a delightfully wacky game that lets them toss tasty bugs into the chomping reptile’s mouth and satisfy his appetite. While having fun with the lovable lizard character, kids will also learn about colours, counting, and matching.

Start the Frenzied Feeding Fun.

Place the 16 included bugs in a large circle — with a diameter of about five feet. Once players are ready, place the chameleon inside the circle and press the button on his back. He starts walking along the edge of the circle, and players wait for his mouth to open, indicating it’s feeding time. When he does, race to collect the colour or type of bug you need and toss it in his mouth before it closes again. But be careful — just when you think you’ve got the most bugs in, he’ll open his mouth, and they’ll fly back out. When he’s full, the chameleon stops walking, and whoever has the most bugs in his mouth wins the game.

Two Exciting Ways to Play

Kids can choose two different ways to play the game — Bug Crunch or Colour Crunch. For Bug Crunch, each player selects an insect type to feed the chameleon, and for Colour Crunch, each player selects a particular colour of bug. The 16 bugs include four types of insects (grasshoppers, ladybugs, dragonflies, and butterflies) in four different colours (blue, green, red, and yellow). When kids are done playing, all the bugs fit in the chameleon’s mouth for easy storage.

What we thought

You need a really big space to play this in, which we don’t have. The chameleon kept bumping into the sofas. It sounds, theoretically like it should be a lot of fun, but we didn’t really enjoy it and the girls (3 and 6 years old) got bored of it very quickly. It may well be, though, that it would be more fun with enough space. (You need a diameter of about 5 feet.)

Would we recommend it?

I couldn’t recommend it unless you definitely a 5 feet diameter space available and, since we weren’t able to play it properly I can’t personally recommend it, though it sounds like it should be quite fun. I think the £19.99 RRP definitely sounds high, but Argos have it for £11.99 at the moment, which seems reasonable.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this game by the publishers, but the opinions are our own.

Molehill Mania (Mattel Games)

Game: Molehill Mania

Publisher/manufacturer: Mattel Games

RRP: £16.99

Recommended age: 4 years up

Publisher’s Blurb

Introducing a whole new way to play Whac-A-Mole. Grab a mallet and smack away on the lever at the base of the play set. With every smack, moles fly out of the molehill and onto the ground. Use the special mole-catching mallet to collect the moles. Be the first player to fill your mallet with moles to have your “mallet” mole reach all the way to the top. Includes 3 different levels of play. Ages 4 and older.

What we thought

It’s quite fun, but limited in playability. Only two players can play at once, so it’s not brilliant if you have more than two children and certainly can’t be played as a whole family. I think it’s great for young children (I’d say probably OK for some two-year-olds upwards, but five and up find it a bit dull).

Would we recommend it?

I would recommend it if you have one or two children under five, but if you have more you may end up with arguments (unless they’re a lot older and completely uninterested in the game). There’s not a huge amount of educational value in it, so if that’s very important to you, you would probably be disappointed. I think the £16.99 RRP is probably a little more than I’d pay, though Argos have it for £10.95 at the moment, which I would be happy to pay.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this game by the publishers, but the opinions are our own.

Playing Molehill Mania (Mattel Games)

Junior Scrabble (Mattel Games)

Game: Junior Scrabble

Publisher/manufacturer: Mattel Games

RRP: £21.99

Recommended age: 8 years up

Publisher’s Blurb

Junior Scrabble lives up to its claim of being an “ideal introduction for children to the world’s favourite game”. Choose one of two levels to suit the age group of the players: young children can start with “Words and Pictures”, a game specially created to help with word formation and recognition. “Rainbow Scrabble” is more challenging and is intended for children aged seven and older, having been specially formulated to introduce players to the adult version of Scrabble, though with a far simpler scoring system

What we thought

Excellent! There are two sides to the board, one with specific words, and one closer to the original. LaLa (3) loved finding letters on the board to cover with the corresponding letter that she’d picked from the bag, and she even worked out a few where the letter wasn’t written on the board. I think she (and other younger children) would enjoy it if the words were all written in. RoRo (6) enjoyed this side, too, and didn’t feel ready for the other side, but I’m sure that will come soon. I’m pleased that I’m going to be able to get the girls into Scrabble early, as no-one else will play it with me (I’m a little too competitive and make too much use of teeny, but point-lucrative words).

Would we recommend it?

I would recommend it, and I’d certainly be happy to pay the £21.99 RRP. Argos have it for £19.95 at the moment.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this game by the publishers, but the opinions are our own.

Playing Junior Scrabble (Mattel Games)

Pictionary (Mattel Games)

Game: Pictionary

Publisher/manufacturer: Mattel Games

RRP: £24.99

Recommended age: 8 years up

Publisher’s Blurb

Celebrate 25 years of the classic game with the new family edition of Pictionary, with two sets of cards (adults & kids) with differing difficulty levels and even more plays. The game of quick sketches and crazy guesses. Let your imagination run wild and your pencil will follow. It doesn’t matter if you can draw the Mona Lisa or just stick figures, the excitement begins when everybody tries to shout out the right answer. This 25th anniversary edition of Pictionary includes 123 adult cards, 83 junior cards, 2 card boxes, 4 category cards, 4 pencils, 4 drawing pads, game board, 4 playing cubes, sand timer, die and instruction sheet.

What we thought

Brilliant! I can’t believe we’ve never owned a copy of this, though we do have similar games. It’s really good that it has a section of children’s words, so that they can join in. LaLa had a good try with it (someone had to read the words to her, though, and so be out of the guessing), but after a while she decided to draw something completely different to the word! RoRo (who is 6 years old) was brilliant at it – both drawing and guessing. (She’s really good at Creationery, too – the Lego version.) It says 8 and over, but I think there would be plenty of younger children who could do it fine. You might need to relax the rules a bit and let them skip words they don’t know, for example, but with the children’s cards, it’s very accessible. And it’s a great game to play as adults, too, and can be really quite funny.

Would we recommend it?

I would recommend it, and I’d probably be happy to pay the £24.99 RRP, which is about what I expect to pay for an adult/whole-family board game. Argos have it for £19.97 at the moment.

Disclosure: We were sent a free copy of this game by the publishers, but the opinions are our own.

Playing Pictionary (Mattel Games)