Travel Wild Guess

The game is exactly as it sounds – it is a quiz where everyone has a wild guess at the answer and the closest guess to the answer wins the points. All answers are numeric, with questions such as: what is the distance between the north and south poles in kilometres. This game is great for a relaxing family quiz that everyone can enjoy. It is highly unlikely that someone will know the exact answer to a question. The answer is literally anyone’s guess and for some questions the wilder the guess the closer you will be.

Cheatwell Games Travel Wild Guess £9 from Amazon

Travel Family Quiz Night

Cheatwell’s Family Quiz Night is a rare gem of a game that really can be enjoyed by all ages. The questions cover 8 popular quiz topics such as movies, science and nature and history. However, where this differs from traditional quiz games is that the question cards include two sets of questions, one for adults and a different multiple-choice question for kids. This means the whole family can get fully involved in the quiz, giving everyone fair stakes in the game.

Cheatwell Games Travel Family Quiz Night £13 from Amazon

On the Go Games

As it says on the tin, this is a compact set of games that is ideal for travels or taking to play with friends and relatives. Card games work well for all ages, and these cards are attractive colours and well made. The pack also includes 6 dice and comes with instructions for three dice games: Chicago, Going to Boston, and Midnight.

On-The-Go Games by Kikkerland £10 from The RNLI Shop

The post Pocket-sized travel games for kids and adults: toy review appeared first on Quays Life.

Top It

Occasionally you come across a game that is surprising for all the right reasons. Top It is that game. On the face of it, it doesn’t look that exciting. But it is an easy to learn and play game that quickly becomes addictive and has become our go to choice for winter nights.

The simple premise is you get a topic on a card, for example, ‘famous singers’ and you have a limited time to come up with as many famous singers as you can starting with the letters in the 9 letter grid-board. Each time someone comes up with a right answer their counter is placed on top of the one before – basically they top it. The counter on the top when the time is up wins all of the points for that letter. Both the grid letters and the cards are changeable, so coming back to it feels fresh every time.

Cheatwell Games Top It £18 from Zatu Games

Kids Charades

Charades has long been a popular party game for all ages. This boxed game gives younger ones a little helping hand in coming up with ideas to act out, and helps adults playing with them too by making sure everyone has child friendly mimes.

The cards come in 6 categories: objects and animals; people and characters; actions and phrases; films and TV; books, songs and rhymes, and an all encompassing anything and everything. The first team to guess a mime in all six categories wins the game.

Cheatwell Games Kids Charades £12.49 from Amazon

The Thumbs Up! Orb Retro Dance Mat

This is one for big kids, especially those adults who remember playing dancing games in amusement arcades or early computer games like Space Invaders. The mat needs about two-feet square of floor space. It is easy to set up with a TV – just plug in and play. Working out the rules of the game is a little more tricky, because the instructions aren’t great. But when you get the hang of it, it’s an active game that comes with 9 different games, 10 dance characters, 110 original songs, and three levels of increasing intensity.

The Thumbs Up! Orb Retro Dance Mat £29.99 from Prezzybox.com

On The Go Games

As it says on the tin, this is a compact set of games that is ideal for travels or taking to play with friends and relatives. Card games work well for all ages, and these cards are attractive colours and well made. The pack also includes 6 dice and comes with instructions for three dice games: Chicago, Going to Boston, and Midnight.

Kikkerland On-The-Go Games £10 from The RNLI Shop

For a card game to play individually, solitaire is always a classic to keep people of all ages entertained.

Dantoy BIOplastic Bio Baking Gift Set

Dantoy’s BIOplastic Baking set for kids is versatile in that it can be used to make real edible cookies from dough as well as role-playing for very young children, working with modelling clay or making shapes in sand.

All the products are made from BIOplastic, which is both biobased and recyclable. In this case the biobased material is 90% sugarcane, formed from a by product of processing raw sugar cane into sugar.

This eco-friendly toy set includes a rolling pin, a whisk, 2 bowls and dough cutters. Whisking, rolling and cutting out fun shapes helps to support fine motor skills, learning play and imaginative fun, as well as encouraging children to learn about renewable plant-based materials that offer a greener way to play.

We made real cookies with it and while the small sizes meant it was a little challenging at times, the bio-plastic equipment made for a fun afternoon of break-free baking.

Dantoy BIOplastic Bio Baking Gift Set £10 from Smyths.

The post Five fun toys and games for cold winter nights appeared first on Quays Life.

The Danish toy producer recently picked up the Toy Industry of Europe’s silver award “Play for change sustainability” for its latest Blue Marine toy collection.

The Blue Marine Toys are made from discarded plastics from the fishing industry, from old nets, trawls, and ropes which have been turned into sand and water toys for young children. The set comes in a net bag which encourages conversations about the origin of the toys, making links to the importance of recycling and cleaning the oceans.

Dantoy’s other ranges also support sustainable toys for early learning and child development. The company’s BIOplastic Baking set for kids is versatile in that it can be used to make real edible cookies from dough as well as role-playing for very young children, rolling out modelling clay or making shapes in sand.

This eco-friendly toy set, made from 90% sugarcane, includes a rolling pin, a whisk, 2 bowls and dough cutters. Whisking, rolling and cutting out fun shapes helps to support fine motor skills, learning play and imaginative fun, as well as encouraging children to learn about renewable plant-based materials that offer a greener way to play.

Dantoy BIOplastic Bio Baking Gift Set £10 from Smyths

The post Eco-friendly sustainable toys are winners all round appeared first on Quays Life.

The sets are aimed at pre-school children between one and five-years-old. The magnetic properties allow these brightly coloured blocks to attach to each other in whichever way little hands want to place them. However, while the magnets make a satisfying clicking sound as they snap together, they are not so strong as to trap tiny fingers or for toddlers to struggle to separate them.

The Blocks and Wheels set brings an added dimension to this early building system. It contains 13 pieces from the Magicube range, including square, triangular and curved blocks as well as a set of four wheels.

There is a small instruction booklet with some ideas to get started. But you’ll quickly find that a child’s imagination can dream up no end of creations.

The toys are educational as well as fun, helping children to develop their hand-eye co-ordination and cause and effect thinking. The product is also sustainably produced, being made from 100% recycled plastic.

Our mini-reviewer found the wheels to be an attractive extra and can imagine little ones spending hours building, pushing and taking apart brightly coloured vehicles.

The Geomag Magicube Magnetic Blocks & Wheels Set is £29.99 from Elc.co.uk

The post Geomag Magicube Magnetic Blocks & Wheels: Toy Review appeared first on Quays Life.

The Geomag Glow and Geomag Glitter are two new lines that add an extra dimension to the popular panel and rod building sets.

Both sets were a hit with our 10-year-old reviewer, who was fascinated by the ‘magical powers’ of the Geomag glow rods to light up after dark, and loved the vibrant colours of the Geomag Glitter, which has become a new favourite.

The toys come with their own neat storage box to keep the small parts, particularly the magnetic balls, safe. They are also interchangeable with other Geomag products. So if you have a set already this can be used to create larger and more colourful creations.

As with all Geomag products there is an instruction booklet that offers suggestions on the kinds of shapes you can make. But coupled with a child’s imagination the options are endless.

As well as supporting STEM.org educational play, the toys are also a good way to introduce discussions about care for the planet and recycling. The glow toys are made from 100% recycled plastic, the packaging uses more than 70% recycled materials and only renewable energy sources are used in the production process.

The Geomag Glow Recycled 42 Piece Set is available for £34.99 and Geomag Glitter (535) 35 Piece Magnetic Construction Set £26 both from The Entertainer

The post Geomag Glow and Geomag Glitter: Toy Review appeared first on Quays Life.

Huckleberry Cable Transport

Our little reviewer had hours of fun with this cable car kit that uses a pulley system to transport a little wooden basket between two points. The kit comes with plenty of strong rope included, which means there is lots of scope for trying this out between trees, tables, or posts. This simple toy is practical, fun and encourages a curiosity about engineering and how things work as well as sparking the imagination ¬– just think of what we could do with this if we had a real tree house.

Huckleberry Cable Transport costs £19.20 from Conscious Craft

Huckleberry Popcorn Maker

If you are planning a camping trip this popcorn maker will help you serve up delicious snacks in minutes. But you don’t need a campfire to enjoy this cooking gadget. Not wanting to start any fires that could risk spreading during such a dry spell we used a gas hob. It worked just as well, was huge fun when it started popping, and is now certain for year-round use. Two teaspoons of popcorn kernels make the perfect amount for a special movie night.

Huckleberry Popcorn Maker costs £18 from Kikkerland

Huckleberry Sand Tools

If you’re heading to the beach the Huckleberry sand tools are great for making shapes and textures to add extra detail to sand castles and other creations. The set includes a 3-sided rake for creating stairs, waves, and other textures; a brush to sweep away loose sand, and a smoothing tool for making walls, and smoothing out tricky bits.

Huckleberry Sand Tools costs £15.35 from Conscious Craft

Huckleberry Leaf Cards

Playing cards are a toy that span the generation divide. Here they’ve been given a new look, with an easy to hold shape and a sturdy container to keep all 52 cards safe. It was lovely to see our little reviewer learning new card games from his grandparents and to watch how much fun he got out of playing them.

Huckleberry Leaf Cards costs £9.60 from Conscious Craft.

For more outdoor toy reviews see our Toys for Little Explorers.

The post Ace this summer with outdoor toys for little adventurers appeared first on Quays Life.

In the video below our 10-year-old reviewer tries out the latest set and enjoys experimenting with polarity to make a spinning mobile.

This set comes with rods in a wide variety of colours. Unlike other sets it doesn’t come with the purpose built, handy-sized, storage boxes. Instead the magnetic balls and rods are packed in polystyrene boxes, which aren’t as practical for reuse. We would have liked to see them using the same recycled plastics, as they do for the Geomag panels, to produce a tidy-away box to keep the different parts safe. And this is an intention for this environmentally aware company longer term – to cut styrofoam use and replace with a reusable box made of hard 100% recycled plastics to ensure protection and durability for the different parts.

The set comes with a small booklet with some ideas of different structures you can build and shapes you can create. But the real pleasure here is getting creative while experimenting with the push and pull of magnetic fields and learning about the strengthening effect of triangulation on structures.

The toy is recommended for ages 3+ because of the nature of the small pieces that could be swallowed. However, it is also suitable for much older children it encourages learning in a playful way, supporting the development of STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

This 88 piece set is an exciting addition to the Geomag construction world. It can be enjoyed on its own or with other sets from the collection as the many Geomag sets are compatible.

The post GEOMAG Confetti 88 pieces: Toy Review appeared first on Quays Life.