Rebecca Reads

My kids, like many others I imagine, are obsessed with collectible toys. Blind bags are the ultimate favourite as we love the excitement of what character you are going to get. Hatchimals CollEGGtibles take the blind bag concept a little further by having their animals inside a cute little speckled egg, just waiting to be hatched out. This adds a bit of depth and extra play time to the toys.

Hatchimals CollEGGtibles Series 3 have recently been released and we were so excited to get the chance to try them out. I'd previously bought E some of Series 1 and 2 so I already knew that she was a fan, but these ones focus on the aspect of Best Friends and you can hatch either single animals or twins but the single animals all have a best friend (you can find who that is on the information leaflet) that you aim to collect too.

Inside our Series 3 review box, we received: Hatchimals CollEGGtibles One Dozen Egg Carton (RRP £24.99), Hatchimals CollEGGtibles 4 Pack + Bonus (RRP £9.99), Hatchimals CollEGGtibles 2 Pack + Nest (RRP £4.99) and Hatchimals CollEGGtibles 1 Pack (RRP £2.99). I love that there is a wide selection for all price ranges.

Automatically, E was drawn towards the blue sparkly egg box - I'm not sure if it was because she loves glitter or because of the sheer amount of eggs inside! The eggs are hatched by pressing gently above the heart and cracking it. She was able to open them successfully by herself and her excitement grew with each egg, even shrieking when she discovered the eggs with twins inside.

We took our time ticking each animal that we hatched off our leaflet, making sure to find out their names and if we got their best friend. You can also find out whether they are common, rare, ultra rare or limited edition and we were lucky enough to get a few of each! They even have three limited edition squads and we got two from the Breezy Beach squad (Breezy Zebrush and Breezy Hamstar) as well as Shimmering Girreo from the Shimmering Sands squad who is my favourite as he's fuzzy!

E completely sped through opening the rest and loved the little addition of the nest in the 2 Pack and reusing the egg box to let her animals have a little sleep.

With over 100 animals to collect, I think we only had around 3 or 4 dupes. Before owning Hatchimals I always thought that the excitement only came with hatching them and afterwards, they'd be pushed to the side as the novelty will have worn off. E proved me wrong and plays with them just like any other figure, using her imagination to get them to interaction and act out scenarios.

Hatchimals CollEGGtibles Series 3 are now available from all good toys shops and are recommended for children aged 5+.

(We received these items for the purpose of this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.)

C has always been a fan of books. He loves being read to and loves to learn. As he has gotten older, he likes to challenge himself by doing activity books and his ultimate favourite is sticking stickers. We were lucky enough to receive two fabulous books from Little Tiger Press that I knew C would love.

Firstly, the 'My Little World' series by Jonathan Litton and illustrated by Fhiona Galloway has two new additions; 'I Spy Learn and Go' and 'I Spy on the Farm'. C received Learn and Go. He also received Little Snappers Dinosaurs Funtime Sticker Activity Book.

C was very excited about the dinosaur book firstly. He is a typical boy and loves all things dino related. Sticking stickers is one of his favourite things to do so when you combine those two together, he is one happy boy.

The first half of the book has the sticker scenes. Each page has a scene and is titled then when you go to the middle of the book you can find all the stickers for each page under the title. I love this as you do have free rein to stick your stickers anywhere but you have a little guidance as to which stickers go on each page. There are also little questions such as 'Can you find xyz?' in the scene.

The second half of the book has activities such as dot-to-dot, colouring, find the odd one out and lots of fun things to get your child excited and interested in. The answers are at the back of the book to check how your little ones get on with the task.

C really enjoyed this book and because it has so much packed into it, he has used it multiple times of the past few weeks and it's been great for keeping him occupied.

The I Spy On The Go book is a similar book to the dino one. The pages are laminated in this one so you can stick, unstick then stick again until your hearts content.

You can visit four different scenes and at each one you are asked to spot different objects, use your stickers to put the missing objects in place and you can also trace words and dress up characters. The answers to each page can be found at the back too. Erasable markets can be used with this book.

This book really got C's brain working and because there is such much going on in each scene, he loved pointing everything out and telling me what they were.