Our December offering from Parragon Books arrived just before Christmas but as it was a busy time, I popped it in the back of my wardrobe and promptly forgot about it, until just before New Year!
Mushroom was very excited when I remembered, and told him we had a package to open… “I had so many books at Christmas Mummy I forgot about my letter book” (he loves to see that big white envelope each month!*). He was even more excited when we realised it was an activity set. “Can we do it right now?”
Mr B had a friend round and we were all in the living room so building the fire station was the perfect activity for us to be around and part of the conversation without Mushroom getting bored. We opened up all the pieces and at first I thought it looked a bit too complicated! Then Mushroom showed me the instructions… I used to always read the instructions first. Now I live life a little closer to the edge, making stuff up as I go along 😉
We put the fire engine together first but couldn’t fit it in the station so we parked it outside while the cat and dog were rescued from a burning fire engine and a tree!
Mr B’s friend was very impressed with the set and especially with all the fire fighters – great to see a diverse range of characters, especially as so many of these sets still come with only white male options.
Once Mr B’s friend had left and we tired of role play, we moved to the kitchen where Mushroom sat at the table and worked his way through the activity book while I prepared dinner. He often skips some pages in the activity books I buy him but with this one, he worked his way through every page, exclaiming at the end “I did the whole book so quickly! I’m sad now because I want to do it again…”
This is a great set as there is so much to do. I loved that we built the set together and then he was able to do the activity book with little supervision. I’m sure the fire engine will be played with until it falls apart too – lots of creative play with this one. I highly recommend it and in fact am already thinking of it as a birthday present for a certain fireman-mad little boy we know! If you know any budding firemen or women, you can get yours from The Book Depository for £7.58. Of course it’s also available from Amazon (at the same price).
*Disclosure: Mushroom and I are Parragon Book Buddies and receive a new book to read and review each month. All views are our own. Read my full PR and disclosure policy here.
