The Little Orchard by Haba Toys

A few weeks ago I was sent The Little Orchard by Haba Toys to review for IzziWizzi Kids Play Fest.

Let me start off by saying it's a beautiful looking game. The board, tree and 15 flower cards are made from really thick card with wonderful visual graphics. The raven, large chunky Dice and cherries are all wooden and the basket is just delightful.

The board is cleverly part of the storage box and very easy to put together. There is potentially a weak point inside the box where the tree slots in to. But that would be easy to re-enforce if it ever became a problem.

The object of the game is to try and get all the cherries before the naughty Raven makes it up the path and eats them. Unusually, players work as a team against the raven to do this which makes this game really refreshing.

The children take it in turns to roll the dice and must turn over a card with a matching image. If they find a sleeping animal they make a 'shhh' noise and turn the card back over. If they find a 'cherry' they take the card out, remove a cherry from the tree and pop it into the basket. If they find a raven they can make a 'Caw' noise and move the raven one step up the path before turning the card back over.

I did wonder if my girls would be a little old for this game even though it says 3-8 years on the box (mine at the time of writing this are 6,6 &7) as at first glance it looks very easy and young. But actually it works ...well for girls anyway.

Because the card they have to pick is determined by a roll of the dice they must always try and remember where the crow is in all the sets. And that's where the team work comes in. It's was really interesting watching my girls being swayed by each other and also trying to convince each other that they were right when they disagreed over which card was 'safe'.

There are also a couple of ways to make the game harder. One way is to starting the raven one or two steps up the path already. The other way is to constantly mix up the deck of cards when they are turned back over leaving it very much to chance.

I really liked this game as did my girls. It ranges in price between £15-£18 which may seem a little expensive but the quality is so good that I think it's worth the price.





We were sent this game for free to review by IzziWizzi Kids. All thoughts, content and images are my own apart from this lovely little badge at the end. That belongs to IzziWizzi

Dissolving, Expanding And Bouncing Eggs

Dissolving egg shells should be on every child's to do list. In fact it should be on every parents to do list if you haven't done it yet!

It's a great visual and tactile experiment to do at home and there are quite a few things that you can talk about with the kids.

You want at least two clear glasses. One to add vinegar to (white is better visually but you can use dark vinegar) and one to add water to. The water is the control substance that will do nothing to the egg and keep it exactly the same. If you have enough glasses and the ingredients you can also use a glass of fizzy drink (we used coke) and a glass of fresh fruit juice (we used orange juice).

Dissolving
Place the same sized egg in each glass and cover with each of the liquids you're using.

The vinegar will start to react straight away producing loads of bubbles as the calcium carbonate in the shell is dissolved by the acetic acid producing carbon dioxide.

We left the eggs for 24 hrs and when we looked found  ...

• The water hadn't done anything
• The coke had surprisingly dissolved very little.
• The orange juice had dissolved quite a bit
• The vinegar had dissolved loads

We put the eggs back in their liquids and left for a further 12 hour and found ...

• The water still hadn't done anything
• The coke had dissolved a little but more.
• The orange juice had dissolved quite a bit more
• The vinegar had dissolved all of the shell

Membranes
Now what you may have noticed is that the egg with no shell is also a LOT bigger than the control shell. This is because the membrane around the egg is semi permeable.

Whilst it was in the vinegar the liquid moved through the membrane into the egg resulting in the membrane swelling and increasing in size.

When you hold the egg with no shell it will feel damp to the touch and that's because the liquid is starting to seep back out through the membrane. You can see this really well if you put the shell-less egg on some kitchen roll. The liquid in the shell will soak into the kitchen towel through the membrane.

Bouncing
And there's more!

The egg without it's shell and now full of extra liquid, will bounce!

But how high will it bounce?

We cut lengths of wool approximately 10cm in length to hold up as a guide to height. How high do you think we got?

Please have a look at all the other blogs that have had fun dissolving eggs in vinegar and please add yours to the list if you have one.

Not Quite Noughts And Crosses

This is a Sponsored Post

One of the things I love about children is that everything is new and exciting. 

On a daily basis they are constantly learning new mental and physical skills. 

The thing is all this 'new' requires energy to process ... a lot of energy. And from the moment my girls wake up to the moment they go to bed food plays an important part of their day. 

Luckily they enjoy food. They enjoy the taste, texture and social element of it, whether it's at school, at home or eating out. 

They have no idea how much effort goes into keeping that interest!

So, that brings me onto a new Walkers snack ... Hoops and Crosses. It sounds like the perfect travel/boredom snack for my three. They can eat and play at the same time but is it really as brilliant as it sounds? 

Well to start with they had great fun using the snack to play 'Noughts & Crosses'. They are a nice size to handle and don't leave too much snack trail behind them. 

On the down side there were a lot more crosses than hoops so we could only have one game going at a time. A shame as there would have been enough in the pack for to games to be played at the same time if there was an even distribution of shapes!

The taste test gave mixed results. 

RoRo and RaRa were very impressed and scoffed pretty much all of the packet. 

 

Eldest on the other hand was not impressed and proceeded to lecture me about poor parenting. Why would I give her the most disgusting thing ever to put in her mouth. She would never trust me again. As a parent I have failed!

To be fair the beef flavour we were sent was very, very strong and a little salty (most crispy things are). 

The 'Hoops and Crosses' are made from whole grains and contain no artificial colours or preservatives and each bag contains 85 calories. They are supposedly vegetarian but there are no markings on the packet that state this which is what I'd expect.

They currently come in three flavours ... Roast Beef, Salt and Vinegar, Prawn Cocktail. As mentioned we were sent the beef ones which were very strong. The current flavour assortment stops them being something that i would by as a norm but I would definitely give any new flavours a try as I liked the texture and feel of them. They reminded me of Monster Munch.

We were sent the snack to try for free along with a cute toy monkey and a wee bit of remuneration. All images, words, and thoughts are my own though

Bottle Blowing Music

This is great fun for adults and kids to play with and if you tune them properly they sound fab. They're often called Bottle Pan Pipes.

You need some empty bottles (plastic or glass) and some water. I like to use glass wine bottles as I find them easier to get notes (the neck makes a difference) out of but you do have to be careful when using glass and children (and some adults!).

Using a jug fill the bottles with different levels of water. Place your lower lip just underneath the rim and blow across the bottle to make a sound. If you don't get any sound adjust the bottle slightly and slowly, keeping your lip in place whilst blowing across the top still.

Once you've got the hang of getting a sound you can then adjust the amount of water in each bottle so that you get a scale ( each bottle makes the next note up).  Six bottles will allow you to play Twinkle, Twinkle ... a party trick for all ages

A Little Bit Of Science

The musical note/sound you get comes from resonance made by the air oscillating in and out of the bottle neck. The difference in the sound of the note you get is caused by a mix of the following things

• the speed of sound in air, 
• the length of the neck, 
• the width of the neck opening 
• the amount (volume) of air inside the bottle. 

The less water you have in the bottle the lower the note will be but the harder it can be to get a sound.

If the amount of air inside is reduced by adding water to the bottle, the resonant frequency will increase and the pitch of the note you get will become higher.


Note
One thing to be careful of is dizziness caused by hyperventilating especially if you start playing some seriously long tunes. 

This was part of a weekly Craft Hangout that I take part in usually as Zing Zing Tree but this weeks theme of Handmade Musical Instruments fitted Blue Bear Wood better. Watch the video to see some great ideas for hand made percussion instruments and catch me playing Twinkle Twinkle (at the end of the video)!

Red Ted Art -  Maracas,shakers and a Strumming guitar
Playful Learners -  straw kazoo
Kids Chaos -  Cacaca...castanets

Craftulate - Paper PlateTambourine

Crystals Tiny Treasures -  Jingle Wristbands

Me And My Shadow - Fairy Bell Shaker

Who Am I

I started using Ms when I graduated from being a child to a woman.

I am not married but do have a partner with a joint mortgage and 3 children. Most people will probably assume I am married.

It's how I act and behave that is important not what a title says about me.

Ms does not identify me as single, married, divorced etc.

It does not define me, make me, put up barriers or break them down. 

I am the person who does all of this.

Me, myself, I. With support from family and friends.


I was born to be a woman...
I was born to be a feminist...


Feminism is just a word but it is an important word.

Being born a female does not put you on an equal footing with a males.

Our world is slowly addressing this but there is still a long, long way to go.

Feminism is about addressing the balance.

One day there will be no Titles.

My Shoes, Your Shoes ...Our Shoes

Heading off in the car to an adventure playground

Mr Dad:    "Right ... did you both find your trainers?"

RaRa:    "Yes.   They were under Eldest's coat."

RoRo:    "No.  I couldn't find mine ..."

RaRa:    "RoRo! You can't wear your doodles, they'll get ruined!

RoRo:    "I know that RaRa! I put some school shoes on instead."

RaRa:     "RoRo, that's even worse...  you've only got one pair of school shoes and you'll ruin them!"

RoRo:    "I know that RaRa. But it's OK ... I'm wearing your school shoes!"

This is part of Actually Mummy...  'Wot So Funee'

Science at Home - Water Beads

Water beads are amazing crystals that absorb up to 400 times their weight in water and increase in size by. They will then shrink again as they loose water to the surrounding environment.

This makes them a fantastic visual material to show children absorption and expansion.

At this point I will mention that although they are non-toxic and biodegradable they are not a toy and are sold as not suitable for children. If you are going to use them do not leave your children unsupervised with them.

We measured the tiny crystal beads before they had water added to them and noted down the time, their approximate size and how much water we added.

Within 1/2 an hour they had already started to expand and grow in size (6mm) as they absorbed the water they were in. But they were no longer round and smooth! Instead we found that the surface was now 'bumpy' like a brain.

An hour later they had absorbed all the water we had put in the bowl and were back to a more spherical shape although there were were still a few small ridges and ripples on the surface. They had continued to grow and now measured approximately 8mm.

We added another cupful (250ml of water) and left them for a further 2 hours. When we looked at them this time all the beads had a smooth surface. They had grown about 2mm bigger so were approximately 10 mm in size. We also noticed that all the water had disappeared.

More water was added so it came up to the top of the bowl and the beads were left soaking over night. 

When we came down in the morning they had swelled to their full 15mm and needed to be drained and  transferred to another bowl. It was very exciting.

Now we're going to wait and see what happens to them over the next week now that they are no longer in water. 

Other terms you can introduce to children using water beads are transparent, translucent and opaque.

Whilst we were moving them we also found out something else rather exciting. Can you guess what it was?

Watch the video to find out ...

This was part of a 'Growing' - Science At Home Google hangout with 

Maggy from Life in The Zoo and Red Ted Art, 

Ali from Kids Chaos, 

Cerys from Rainy Day Mum 

Trisha from Inspiration Laboratories.

Do go visit The Hangout page and take a look at all the other fabulous contributions for this weeks 'Growing' topic. There are some great activities mantioned.