Hop. Search. Unscramble with LolliBox

Psssst… LolliBox is having a contest and giving away 5 Lollliboxes! Details at end of post! 

I bought a pet cockroach from my recent Bangkok vacation for Jerry because i thought it was fun (yes, i do have a wicked sense of humour and its fake by the way. Made of plastic). I love nature and animals, insects and i think they are amazing. Cockroaches or not, they all have a life of their own and they are just surviving in this world, co-existing with us and this is something that i would like to impart that to my kids. The love of nature and the respect of every single life out there.

I hear you all screaming and squirming. I can understand. But, there is really nothing about them to fear about, honestly. Besides, we are so much bigger in size as compared to those roaches. I think i also bought a huge spider for Jerry on my last last vacation to sydney. I know right, my choice of toys.

I let you in on a secret – I am known as the cockroach buster for my colleagues cos i would willingly go catch it for them and remove it out of the way, but i digress.

The point is, if we are scared of something and show it to the kids, they, too would be scared. I would like to expose my kids to everything, and have them decide if they would like them or hate them. Besides, i always believe in kids have NO fear. They only have curiosity that allows them to learn, and as parents, the best we can give is to fuel that thirst of learning and never diminish their curiosity or interest.

Well, which brings me to the point – I was super excited when I was offered the Itsy Bitsy Bugs themed LolliBox for review! This is my 2nd review on LolliBox (read my first review on Feathered Friends themed LolliBox) and can i say, its equally, if not more fun?

Jerry has also grown a lot more interactive these days and can speak quite fluently which makes the crafting session a lot more interesting. And guess what? One of the craft projects is creating an itsy bitsy spider (Jerry’s favourite!) so i was very sure he was going to enjoy himself.

I had a hard time taking the above picture. He kept going, “mummy, can i open already? Mummy!! Can i open? Mummy, i want to open! Mummy, open please! Mummy mummy!” (you get the gist).

If this is your first time reading about LolliBox, it is essentially a pre-packed craft learning kit revolving around various themes that consists of crafting activities and more! Some of the suggested activities bring you outdoors to learn more about the nature! The LolliBoxes take your kid through a holistic experience of creating, discovering, enriching and awarding and seeks to develop creativity, expressions, observation, experimenting, stimulate imagination as well as boosting their self confidence. It’s suitable for 3-7 year olds and it’s pre-packed and delivered to your door step and all you have to do is open up and hands-on! It saves me a lot of time thinking and prepping what type of activities to do with Jerry and there are so many themes to choose from. And errm, Jerry is not even 3 yet, so i guess you can start ordering as early as 2yo if your kid is up for it.

We started with the spider first! No brainer right? Jerry’s favourite! First, we got him to twirl the yarn around daddy’s hand. Quite a bit of hand-eye coordination work here and Jerry needed some help with it.

We let Jerry hand-ons as much as possible and let him handle a real scissors with close supervision. We believing in exposing him and potentially use the opportunity to learn the necessary danger involved with handling a scissors. Besides, he is way too curious for everything so we figured teaching him early and equipping him with the knowledge is far better than shielding him. We can’t forever be there all the time right?

I had to help him twist the pipe cleaners as well. As much as Jerry is quite advanced in his motor skills for his age, this is proving a little hard – holding 4 pipe cleaners together and twisting them altogether at the same spot but i think its would be a breeze for the older kids attempting this.

Daddy showed Jerry how to make a knot – he created a big loop and told Jerry to put one end of the string into it, and pull from the other side! I had a lot of fun watching the father and son bond through the activities.

Jerry puts glue on the tiny eye for the spider here, all by himself. Definitely putting his fine motor skills at work and i must say, i’m pretty impressed!  Those eyes are tiny!

But that’s NOT all. There’s more to this activity! We needed to create a web for the spider to reside in. The poor spider needs a web!

Jerry handles the scissors and cuts slits in the plastic plates. He just cuts, and daddy just turns the plates to the area for him to make the slits. Somewhat a production line going on here.

One last step – wrap the strings around the slits in the plate and we have a spider web! Jerry excitedly plonks the spider in there and here’s the completed craft – Spider in the spider web!

Happy kid. Happy daddy. Happy bonding. Happy family!

We started on the firefly craft next but i won’t bore you with all those crafting details, but Jerry mad loves his firefly (it really does glow in the dark) and i thought it was a brilliant idea to introduce to kids.

We completed the firefly in no time too. Very fun projects to take on with the kiddo. Even daddy is impressed with the craft packs even though the OCD him had to hold himself back when Jerry almost dripped the glue onto the carpet. Heh. And oh, we did have to use our own craft glue and scissors to complete the crafts though so do prep some craft glue to stick those bits else they won’t stay with the normal glue.

In the second last picture above, Jerry plonks the light stick into the bottle and capped the bottle. We didn’t break the light stick until night fall for the full effect. After all, the fireflies only light up at night right?

The kid was filled with amazement when i broke the stick and had the firefly light up that night. He witnessed the entire lighting up process and was pretty excited (and tried to break it some more, haha!). I shall save the chemical reaction explanation till another day when he is up for it. For now, i’ll just let him enjoy the light and bask in the glow.. That night, Jerry slept with his little firefly friend by his bedside and totally love his firefly! I think its going to be his favourite insect now.

Now, do you want to win one of the 5 LolliBox that are up for grabs? Well, you got to play a little game to win it.

LOLLIBOX PRESENTS HOP. SEARCH. UNSCRAMBLE.  Unravel the secret sentence contest.

The title says it all and it thought its pretty cool. Involves a little fun instead of the usual giveaway. Are you up for PLAY? Here’s the instructions in 4 simple steps.

1. HOP around a list of blogs (find list below!). Each blogger reviews a different theme of LolliBox as well so you can decide which you want to win or if you want to win something else!

2. SEARCH through these mum blogger’s LolliBox reviews and collect all 5 pieces of the secret sentence.

3. UNSCRAMBLE them and form the secret sentence.

4. Enter your entry at LolliBox HOP. SEARCH. UNSCRAMBLE contest page and you stand to be one of the 5 winners to walk away with a LolliBox of your choice theme! The unraveling ends 11 April.

Winners will be selected based on answer accuracy. The contest will end on 11 April, with the winners released the following week on LolliBox’s FB page & website. This contest is open to all residents of Singapore with a local mailing address. Other terms and conditions apply (check contest page).

You got that clear? Head on to LolliBox HOP. SEARCH. UNSCRAMBLE to receive your first piece of the secret sentence…. BUT WAIT! Here’s the hint on the list of blogs. I heard…..

Disclaimer: I received a LolliBox for review purposes and no other form of compensation is received. All thoughts and opinions in post are of my own.