Ad Disclosure: we were sent these products by Spinmaster for the purpose of this post.
Spinmaster have a huge range of different toys and craft sets that are ideal to help pass the time while our children are limited to the house and garden. I’m sure our girls aren’t the only kids who are starting to chafe at the restrictions that mean no days out and no seeing their friends.
We were sent the KumiKreator and a Kinetic Sand set for the girls to play with, and they certainly kept them entertained for a good few hours apiece, with plans to play with them both again in the coming days.
Lydia really enjoyed playing with the 2-in-1 KumiKreator, which creates pieces of jewellery by weaving together up to 12 threads together. Inspired by Japanese Kumi bracelets, this makes really fun friendship bracelets and necklaces. The kit we were sent has everything you need to make two necklaces and five bracelets.
Lydia only needed help from me to set it up and do the finishing touches – she was delighted to do all of the winding herself, watching with amazement as the bobbins moved and the threads weaved themselves together. Lydia decided to create both a bracelet and a necklace for herself, and is going to make the rest of the bracelets and another necklace and send them to her best friends.
I tried the KumiKreator with some budget embroidery floss I had in my stash and was able to make a necklace with them by reusing the bobbins; winding the floss by hand onto them and then using the clever machine to weave them together. It’s noisy but fun to use – and totally fascinating to watch the bobbins move around. If you don’t have any threads of your own, you can buy refill sets which also skips the hassle of rewinding bobbins!
Both girls volunteered to ‘help’ test out the Kinetic Sand and we sat out in the garden in the sunshine with it on a tray. It kept them (and me!) entertained for ages; it’s so satisfying to handle, mix together, chop, layer up, and generally experiment with.
Kinetic Sand is a type of coated sand, which flows like normal sand but can also be compacted together. When pressed together or into a mould, it acts more like a solid and can be sliced or manipulated with pressure.
The Rainbox Mix set we were sent includes 3 reusable castle containers (which can double up as moulds) full of kinetic sand in red, yellow, and blue, as well as a slicer, a squishier & sand portioner, 3 squishier stamps, a stacker mould, and the instruction sheet.
You can use the clear stacker mould to create colourful towers of sand, with a patterned internal structure that is revealed when you slice it – by using the squisher stamps to pack the sand down into shape. It’s totally addicting and very satisfying! Georgie is going to be very happy in a few weeks when she finds out I’ve bought her two more Kinetic Sand playsets to enjoy.
As you can tell, the girls had a lot of fun with both of these products, and I anticipate many more hours of entertainment using them too, which will definitely help with the lockdown boredom!
As well as these two ranges, Spinmaster have some great products available to keep your kids entertained. We’ve been working with Spinmaster for quite a while here at Mama Geek now, and here are some of our favourite products, many of which the girls still play with:
