Bigjigs In The Garden - Play Patrol Review

Bigjigs In The Garden

Bigjigs Flower Press and Twigz Gardening Tools Review

Our recent delivery from BigJigs arrived at the perfect time for us to enjoy over a sunny weekend in the garden. 

Last year Dad painted a shed and decorated the inside of it to turn in to a playhouse for me and Lottie and on one side we have built a bug hotel and on the other side we are making a little flower and vegetable patch so we were thrilled to recieve a box of Twigz My First Gardening Tools.

 


The Bigjigs Flower Press and
Twigz My First Gardening Tools



The tools are really nice, they are quite strong and there is a good selection- we had a bucket, gardening gloves, a spade, a fork and a mini rake so were able to do everything we needed. We started by planting some tomatoes up in growbags and then did some work digging in our little patch of the garden. We both had a potato from a growing competition at school to plant so we have done that and we have also got the area ready to plant some flowers we have chosen at the farm shop.

 

I really liked the tools, they are easy to use and worked well, I think these are great for getting kids interested in getting out in the garden.

We were also sent a Bigjigs Flower Press. I didn't get much of a look in with this as Lottie loved it so much she just wanted to press everything she could find! It was quite easy to use- just pick some flowers, leaves or petals and put them inside a folded sheet of paper. We found it worked best when we left the flowers for at least a week to dry out but I liked the fact that you could add several different sheets of paper at the same time to dry lots of different flowers.

 

Being allowed to look at the flower press
under Lottie's strict instructions!



When we unscrewed the press and took out the flowers we just gently took them off the paper- they were very fragile to handle but dried really well. These looked really nice so we decided to do something with them- we found a plain jar and covered it with glue and then stuck the flowers on carefully and then glued over them and it worked really well to decorate it.

 



The flowers immediately after
opening the press

The flowers after removing from
 the paper in the press

 

    
I thought this looked really effective and now we have had a practice I would like to try some other pots- we would probably press them a little longer and also try ones without the stems as they stuck better. I would choose brighter colours than Lottie did next time to see how they come out. I like the idea of making a bookmark using leaves too. 

 

Making good use of our artwork
 to store treats!

Our first attempt at decorating with the
pressed flowers

Lottie loved the flower press and I think there are lots of fun craft projects you could do with it at different times of year.

 

 

Epic Imaginary Play with Gigi Big Building Blocks!- Bigjigs Play Patrol

Epic Imaginary Play with Gigi Big Building Blocks!

Bigjigs Play Patrol Our Latest Mission!

We were very excited to arrive home from our holiday to find a new delivery from the lovely people at Bigjigs. We opened the packaging box to discover we had been sent a box... full of boxes! Although not just any old boxes, they were the new Gigi Big Building Blocks to be precise. These are basically flat strong cardboard sheets ready for you to make up in to bricks and then you can just get on and play with them however you like.

The blocks were quite tricky to make up to start with and I needed my Dad to help with this but once they were done Lottie and I couldn't wait to get started.

In the set we were sent they came as a mixture of double and single bricks but can be purchased in several different combinations depending on what you want to use them for - this set of bricks has been perfect for everything we have wanted to use them for so far but we might like to add to them in the future.

Gigi Blocks- ready to be turned into amazing creations

The bricks stack up really well and can be used to make almost anything you can imagine- we have made a boat, a fort, a person and a television which we had great fun doing shows behind as well as lots of walls and mazes. The bricks are great fun in themselves just for building and using your imagination but also awesome because you can actually play inside your creation.

Look who's on Kids TV!

The other nice thing is that because of the cardboard they are made of you could even paint or draw pictures or patterns on them- we haven't done this yet but we definitely want to - maybe once we have build the perfect house we will decorate it! 

Lottie's new friend!

I really liked these blocks and Lottie loved them too- we did have some little arguments about what we wanted to build but we soon started working as a team and really enjoyed sharing ideas together. My Mum liked the blocks to as she said she liked watching us really use our imaginations and loved how much time we spent playing with just this one set - this really was the perfect toy to spend the last few days of the school holiday enjoying and I can see us using them a lot more in the future too.

Our monster!