Green living with Cravendale & the Muppets

Now, I consider the family to be relatively “green” though like most things there is always room for improvement! I think it’s a great idea to get your children thinking “green” and as Cravendale have shown, it just takes a little creative imagination.

Cravendale are celebrating the release of Disney’s “The Muppets Movie” due to be released throughout the UK on the 10th February 2012, while helping families to be green.

Image by Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer via Flickr

Cravendale are giving away free limited edition sticker sets (4 to collect in total) featuring your favourite characters from the Muppets movie. The stickers can be used to transform empty bottles of Cravendale into something much more fun and entertaining.

The stickers fit onto the bottles perfectly and with a few simple steps Cravendale milk bottles are transformed into a truly awesome Muppets character.

My children loved it, especially the toddler who is crazy about frogs so, seeing the milk bottle transform from its usual boring self, into Kermit the Frog really brighten his morning.

Harley sat and played with his milk bottle Kermit for an hour or more, allowing me a little “Me time” So… Not only did we do something great for our planet, it also allowed me a little peace and quite 🙂 The benefits to being green were truly fabulous.

To get your free stickers to create your own Muppet friends, as well as other exclusive Muppet downloads just visit milkmatters.co.uk

What’s more, there are also VIP tickets for the screening of The Muppets movie to be won by fans who share a picture of their Muppet Cravendale bottles on the Cravendale Facebook page.

So… why not have a go and transform your empty Cravendale milk bottle’s into a delightful new friend.

Thanks to Britmums for supplying us with the stickers.

Related articles

• Film Review: The Muppets (filmophilia.com)
• Cravendale Milk (robinparis.wordpress.com)
• Kermit the Frog Sleeping Mask (neatorama.com)

LEGO AND NERF THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANY LITTLE MAN AT CHRISTMAS

As many of you may well have noticed, my Little man has become something of a Lego mad 11-year-old! Funny enough he doesn’t seem to be the only one as when engaging in a conversation on the boy with Aspergers Facebook page, Lego seems to be top of the list when it comes to a child with Aspergers Christmas wish list!

With Little man becoming totally obsessed with these little coloured blocks that have the tendency to make you scream out loud if accidentally stepping on one, you can only imagine his excitement in the discovery of his latest Santa’s Little helpers review.

Those lovely people over at Argos are really getting to know what my children like as the review products being sent just seem to hit the nail on the head!

This time Argos supplied the Little Man with a selection of LEGO Green building plates 32 x 32 studs, a big box of Lego bricks and an awesome Nerf Vortex Proton.

Image via Wikipedia

LEGO PLATES AND BOX OF LEGO BRICKS

The Green Lego building plates 32 x 32 studs are the ideal base for any construction, whether it’s a forest, house, football stadium or just a base to showcase their favourite transport creations. These are the ultimate Lego accessory for any Lego mad collector.

These plates can’t be brought in-store and are advertised as an Argos Online Exclusive (forming part of the Argos extended internet range)

These are sold individually and are priced at £7.45

As mentioned Argos also sent along a big box of Lego containing over 300 pieces,  the perfect addition to Little man’s already growing collection. Argos stock a number of Lego additions in it’s online Lego bricks and more range. This includes all the “Must Have” essentials such as whole boxes of wheels and windows, even tiles for all those children that just love to build houses and skyscrapers.

Armed with his new plates and extension of bricks Little man set of on a construction mission which actually resulted in him disappearing for a good few hours, into his own little Lego world aka his bedroom.

Recently the Little guy has been doing some very serious planning (believe me I know! His recited this plans to me daily) Now my son tells me he is going to have his very own brand! Yep, this brand will own a number of buses and a string of hotels. With this he uses his PC to construct a plan for his hotels, this consists of the whole virtual design and layout, its contents and main attractions, a massive plan and project for this Little man. The brand name is already decided and my Little guy has given me the strict instructions not to disclose due to copyright which he begs me to actually pay to register! Hopefully this will lead to a bright future for my Little man! Anyway my point being, Little man is actually now using Lego alongside his PC to plan his hotels and if you haven’t already guessed the Green plates have made the ideal platform to do this.

Yep, this 11-year-old has been extremely busy planning for his future with the use of Lego. He has given me some deep and in-depth talks on the Ins and outs of his project with the use of his Lego built hotel plans to demonstrate. As much as I love my son, he does tend to overdo it a little when it comes to one-way conversations in respects to his own interests a well-known characteristic of his Aspergers syndrome.

Nonetheless, it’s been eventful and fun in our house and what with Little man being of school the past week due to illness, Lego has become an extension of himself!

Little man gives this a cool five stars ***** unsurprisingly!

Above the Lego plates and one of many Little Man’s hotel development plans

Parental Perspective

Lego is a firm favourite with me, its given my son an additional special interest besides his deep fondness of transport (mainly buses). He incorporates the two interests (building buses with Lego) and has had a great deal of fun discovering and learning from his new love of Lego.

Lego is a great developmental tool that helps to aid the imagination of a child as well as the addition of the development of fine motor skills.

As a parent I highly recommend Lego for children of both sexes and those over the age of 4.

As a parent to a child with Aspergers, I couldn’t recommend it enough!

These goodies got an awarded score of 4 stars **** from me. Minus one for the pain inflicted to my foot!

Some of his Lego

Some hotels on wheels creations

NERF VORTEX PROTON

We quite recently reviewed another Nerf blaster (the daddy of Nerf’s) So, I knew the Little man would be happy to receive this addition of Nerf blaster.

The Vortex proton is one of the smaller Nerf blasters, its lightweight, looks great and isn’t overly priced.

The Nerf Vortex Proton is a compact fast loading single short disc Nerf Blaster.

As with all the Nerf Blasters, this features XLR long-range disc. This particular model comes complete with 3 discs and an instruction booklet.
The disc can be fired up to 60 feet and has a recommended age limit of 8 years plus.

Of course the Little man got all excited when discovering his new Nerf Vortex Proton and couldn’t wait for a test run. His was actually quit clever when coming up with and carry out his idea to make a target from a cardboard box. This meant he could practice and practice and he did! Later his cousin who is also on the autism spectrum arrived. These two very loud boys got down to some serious Nerf playtime.

Little man’s score a 4 stars ****

Parental Perspective

I wasn’t to sure on the Nerf collection when hearing about them and wondered if these toy guns were really appropriate. However once I saw them I decided that with the resemblance to a water gun these Nerf Blasters are just a toy and nothing more.

I love how the Nerf encouraged Little man’s creativity when he decided he would build a target out of cardboard. The little man really used problem solving when considering ways to improve his aim, and by thinking out the box he came up with the perfect solution. The Nerf has also helped with little man’s aim and ability to judge distance.

At just £11.99 a tiny price in contrast with the newer and bigger Nerf blasters, I found it to be a great price, something of a bargain. This is an ideal first Nerf blaster and one I think deserves a place in our Santa’s Little helpers wish list!
5 stars ***** from mum.

Why not visit the Argos Nerf shop for your perfect Nerf blaster

Thanks you Argos for again sending us some awesome products to use within our Santa’s Little helpers feature. I really recommend all the fab toys above and those we have already reviewed for Argos.

If your interested in any of the mentioned products in this post (or any other toys available from Argos) could I suggest you pop over to Argos online and buy or reserve your products for collection from your nearest store! What with us being just a few days from December and a mere 27 days from Christmas, Argos will be over ran with last-minute Christmas shoppers. Please take this advice, I know as I’m normally one of them last-minute crazy shoppers and yes, things tend to get a little crazy down at Argos this time of year. 

Lastly some other big news in the world of Argos and Christmas is their ‘Big up to half price toy sale‘ with many of the big brand toys currently on sale it’s one not to be missed so I advise you get on over there right away to avoid disappointment.

Related articles

• The KRE-O Bumblebee construction set from Argos (aspergersinfo.wordpress.com)
• LEGO Xmas tree builds holiday cheer in London (digitaltrends.com)
• Giant Lego Christmas Tree at St Pancras station, London [videos + photos] (nickburcher.com)

The Bumpeez Giveaway

I recently contacted the guys over at Bumpeez to inform them that since writing the Bumpeez review the blog has gone a tad Bumpeez mad.

 Daily when I visit my blog I discover that many of my visitors have found the blog via google when searching the word BUMPEEZ!

 So, with this in mind them lovely Bumpeez lot sent me a Bumpeez album with an additional packet of Bumpeez, to review and share with you all!

Plus the bonus of an extra album set for one of you! Yep, you can win one right here!

 We, were pretty sure Bumpeez would be a big playground craze and a hit with children on the autism spectrum and its looking pretty much like we were right! I know that little man is now a tad mad about about these little funky chips, his really enjoying collecting the chips that come complete with their outer silicon case and has already began swapping with the neighbours.

 The Bumpeez album gives you a way to Keep all your Bumpeez chips in order! The album consists of 30 pages and contains a check list of all the Bumpeez and is a super collectors guide to playing all of the Bumpeez games. You can easily find where a chip should be placed by the picture and the number displayed ! This album is a really cool but entertaining way to keep your Bumpeez safe (Please note that you cannot display the chips when in their outer casing, this should be removed first. 

 The album pack also comes with an additional packet of Bumpeez that contains 2x chips and 2x outer cases (retail value £1.99) 

Special rare packs of Bumpeez contain Silver swirl (bi-colour) and Gold Bumpeez. Golden Bumpeez can win you an awesomw prize (ipods and more).

Bumpeez also have an online official website www.bumpeez.com where kids can access games and exclusive features.

To see the  original review and learn more about Bumpeez please do, by clicking HERE

 For your chance to win a Bumpeez Album with additional packet of Bumpeez simply…

 Comment below telling me why you would like to win! Please include a contact, whether its you’re twitter ID or an email address.

 For an additional entry click the tweet button below under the sharing options for this post, edit to add the words, “I want to win a Bumpeez album with clairelouise82 keeping the ULR the way it appears.

Leave me a additional comment from that of above telling me you have done so!

 For another additional entry, follow me on Networkblogs link located in side bar. Tell me u have done this via an additional comment 

 Finally for one more additional entry rate this post by clicking on the stars at the top of the post. Let me know you have done so in an additional comment than those above. 

 You must provide a contact email or twitter id

This Competition is open to UK residents ONLY, and will remain open in-till the 12th October 2011. You must be over 18 to enter, and will be given a week to make contact following the winner notification via the blog.

My Little construction workers

 Alice-Sara, shared her construction skills when reviewing the Meccano tool box for girls, back in August, Now it was the turn of the boys.

 Products we were sent: Space-Chaos & the Build and play mini case.

 First up it’s Little man’s review of the Space Chaos

 Space Chaos is designed for children 7-14 years (at almost 11yrs this was well within his age range).

 Before getting out the cash and splashing out, I suggest you find out if, (a) your child is a goodie (therefore the Silver force is what you should be aiming for) or (b) Your child is a baddies (therefore requiring a construction set from the Dark Pirates range).

As we were sent the products for the purpose of a review we didn’t put a request in, but on arrival of a Space Chaos, Dark pirates, I felt this was the right choice (Yes, he actually prefers to be a baddie, like his mum, *Evil laugh* follows)

 So, what’s the fuss about!

 Space Chaos is a collection of Air craft/space ships consisting of drones, raiders, bombers, fighters, destroyers and more! Each Set can make two models with a pack contents of around 140+ parts and pieces. The kit contains a special sound function that can be activated at the push of a button.

 Space Chaos Models come with a range of stickers to pimp out your ship, as-well as two trading cards showing the unique powers of each spaceship. Each trading card also displays a secret code, this can be entered online to access lots of extra goodies, including wallpapers, posters, cards, combat cards and plenty more.

 Getting stuck in!

Before I go any further I wish to remind or inform the readers who don’t know, that little man has Aspergers and has associated difficulties with his Gross and fine-motor skills. His recent Occupational therapy assessment highlighted that he has a much greater difficulty with his use of fine motor skills, then we all thought and expected. With this in mind I wanted to see how he was able to cope with the Meccano set, or if it could actually help better his skills.

 I grabbed some drinks and on my return discovered he had open every single individual sealed bag which contained the many different parts and mixed them together as one! “Great, this wasn’t going to be easy” All the pieces in the set were a mix of both plastic and metal. The instructions looked simple enough, yet the pieces were mixed and I can’t even construct a kinda egg toy let alone this thing!

 Little man was getting nowhere, so after what seemed like days I finally managed to separate all the parts into their required piles. The bits where very fiddly for little man and he continually dropped them, he became angry refusing to try again. Little man has very low concentration, so, we did some sections over the course of a few days till day three when he spent time with his father, the model was finally completed.

 Advantages

Good instructions

Builds two models 

Sound effects

Trading cards and online feature

End result, a great toy that offers lots of playability

Little man doesn’t stick with something for long specially if it’s not bus or train related. Through with his fathers help he remained focused, Patient, and willing. To have completed the model into something that offered playability. This was a massive achievement.

Disadvantages 

Difficult for children who experience difficulties with their fine motor skill.

No storable click case

The build and play mini (5-8yrs)

 A small sturdy solid case containing around 30+ pieces of flexible, easy click parts that allow a child to construct a total of two models (note: only one at a time)

 Now, this was Harley’s set and I’m not about to moan about the fact he didn’t have the first idea how to build this (apart from the construction of a wheel, which I’m sure happened by chance)! Why? Because at 21 months this set, that is recommend for 5-8 year olds is way to advanced and wasn’t going to happen. The idea was for Alice to carry out the honours and construct the set and once together, Harley would have a chunky car to text drive around the living room!  I now jokingly call  Alice Wendy from (Bob the builder) as she seems to have a skills when it comes to Meccano builds.

The way in-which the pieces click together is the same as Alice-Sara’s own meccano set. She read the instructions with ease and being at the top of the recommend age range for this toy she experienced little if not any problems at all.

 The end result, Harley had a very nice buggy type car with beady eyes.

 I’m unsure if a 5yr old could construct this set as well as maybe a 7 or 8 year old. Little man also had ago at Harley’s set and despite his fine motor skill problems, he had no difficulties due to the easy click together action and the bigger more flexible pieces.

 For this reason I would personally recommend the set designed for younger children, with the bigger easier to hold parts, if buying for a child with difficulties with their fine motor skills. (Just remove the label displaying the recommended age) little man would become very dishearten if he saw this.

Advantages

Capability to build two models

Big chunky pieces

easy to follow instructions

End result, a good toy with lots of playability 

Plastic click case to store parts

Disadvantages 

You can only build one model at a time

I Liked both products, but could see myself buying the latter (mini build and play) purely because of Little mans difficulty with the Space Chaos. I think the finished models of both sets look great! The build and play looked fantastically funky and cute, especially the big beady eyes. The Space Chaos had the added touch of the sound effects which Little man loved.

I also love that the mini set comes in a click case allowing you to store the pieces away nicely, something sadly the Space Chaos lacked.

 Stars awarded

Space Chaos ****

mini build and play *****

Prices do vary so I would suggest having a look around online

But for those who hate bargain hunting you can get

Space Chaos Dark Pirates for : Amazon for £18.38

Mini build and play: Amazon for £9.99

 The world of Space Chaos can be discovered by visiting its websites which has been dedicated to the Space Chaos entire range.  http://spacechaos.meccano.com

Related articles

• Girls can do Meccano too (aspergersinfo.wordpress.com)