Ad disclosure: We were sent these products free of charge for the purpose of this post.
Half term is here, and with the weather being pretty cold and wet we are definitely going to be hibernating inside for most of the week. With two kids to entertain, I’ll be digging out all our ‘rainy day’ supplies to keep them busy. Milly & Flynn have helped us out with this by sending us some fun kits to put together, and a very special mug for some easy treat baking.
We were sent a Giraffe 3D foam puzzle, a Crocodile 3D foam puzzle, a Puzzle & Grow build your own windmill and garden set, and a ‘Cake in a Mug’ mug. These have definitely kept the kids entertained for a few hours already, as well as given them an ongoing project for the rest of the week.
The first thing we did was put together our Puzzle & Grow windmill set, popping out the puzzle pieces and putting together the 3D puzzle using the numbered tabs & slots as a guide. The girls enjoyed doing this, but did need the odd bit of help on the trickiest bits.
The next step was to fill the little plastic planter tray (which slots into a hole in the puzzle) with some cotton wool, and scatter the included cress seeds on top.
The kit includes two little packs of seeds so you can grow more once your first crop is over, as well as a little squirter bottle to water your plants. The girls love that they are growing a garden for the windmill! Thankfully cress is pretty hard to kill as they are being very vigilant with their watering!
This afternoon the girls decided to put together their 3D foam puzzle animals – Lydia chose the giraffe while Georgie tackled the crocodile. These puzzles are made of pretty thick foam which is really sturdy, and the completed animals are fun to play with as well as put together.
You get some simple image step by step instructions on the back of the box, and both 6 year old Lydia and 8 year old Georgie were able to follow along with these with only a little help from James and myself. The giraffe had a lot of pieces to pop out and put together as you have to slot every orange spot into the yellow foam pieces. Lydia would have been able to do this on her own but it would have taken a long time without us working together!
The finished puzzles are pretty fun to play with, as you can move the crocodile’s mouth and tail, and the giraffe’s legs, tail and neck. This was enough movement for Lydia to sit and play make believe for quite a while, making the giraffe skip, hop, and generally move around the room eating imaginary bushes and having all sorts of random adventures.
The final thing in our box of goodies was a mug to make microwave cake in. I’ve tried a few microwave mug cakes before but you still usually have to faff with measuring out dry ingredients by weight or it’s an American recipe in ‘cups’ which you then have to convert – it’s just a hassle, either way.
This mug is different and makes it easy for you – the dry ingredients are poured in up to the lines on the inside of the mug, and then you just follow the instructions which are printed on the outside of the mug.
Mix up the dry ingredients, add a beaten egg and stir, then add 9 tsp of milk, 9 tsp of oil, stir and pop in a few squares of chocolate, and microwave for 3 minutes. It’s that easy!
Lydia helped me do this and I’ve already had to promise we’ll make another one later in the week after it was demolished rather quickly. The ingredients are all the sort of thing we keep on hand, and so it won’t be a problem to quickly whip up a yummy chocolate treat when we feel the urge!
The girls and I have definitely had fun getting creative with these products – and they’ll help keep the girls occupied this half term.
