Chad Valley Dolls House and Vtech My First Tablet Review

When I think back to my childhood and in particular to the toys that my twin sister and I had, I always remember our dolls house. Our dad made it for us. It was wooden, pink and had lights that actually worked. We would spend hours playing with it, making up imaginary scenarios!

After looking online at a few shops, I finally decided that I would buy the Chad Valley three storey dolls house for our girls. I choose to buy it from Argos because it was half price (£26.99) and because Argos are local to us, plus I tend to buy pretty much all of my Christmas shopping online. It saves time and when I know what I want I can simply reserve it and pick it up at a time that suits me.

We drove to our local store and whilst Twin Daddy went to a games shop with M, I went into Argos with R. After giving our reservation number and paying for the dolls house, we had a short wait of around three minutes before we called to collect our items.

As I had R with me and no pushchair, the man who served us was very helpful and offered to carry the dolls house to the car for me because it was quite heavy. I didn’t think it would be heavy, but in hindsight when you consider it’s made of wood it would be wouldn’t it!

Anyway, when we got the dolls house home, both R and M were very excited and couldn’t wait for us to put it together!

It does require assembling and took Twin Daddy about 30 minutes to complete. It was easy to put together and no parts or screws were missing.

As mentioned aboved the dolls house has three storeys and the roof is also removable for easy access. The ground floor consists of a living room and kitchen. The second floor consists of a dressing room and bathroom and the top floor is the master bedroom.

It comes with the following furniture

• Two sofa’s with blue cushions
• A table
• Two sets of stairs
• A kitchen sink 
• Fridge
• Toilet
• Bath with towel attached
• Dressing table with mirror
• Three small tables
• Bed
• Two lamps
• Two dolls (one male and one female)

I would highly recommend this dolls house and although the age recommendation is 3 years+, our girls really enjoy playing with it.

 

 

After a few days of use, R and M now enjoy filling it up with their soft toys and we had one rather unfortunate incident where poor yellow ted got his head stuck in the stair well!

 

Vtech My First Tablet

Another recent purchase was the Vtech My First Tablet. I’ve blogged previously about how I’m unsure if I want our girls to play our iPhones and iPads. I’ve heard stories from some parents that allowing their child to play with an iPad has helped their children to learn new skills and one colleague of mine has said that it’s helped his daughter learn how to count and recite the alphabet. I can certainly see the advantages, but I’m not sure I want to allow them free reign of our gadgets as I would hate for them to be playing on them all day and doing nothing else.

When I saw the Vtech My First Tablet, I thought this would be a happy medium. At only £19.99 I feel happier in the knowledge that if it gets thrown, dribbled on or stood on it’s only cost me just under £20 compared to the price of an iPad!

Aimed at children from 24 months of age up, it includes eight modes of fun game play and children can send virtual emails or visit their calenders. It’s a great way to children learning through play.

It has a piano, which M and R enjoy playing and it also has four fun letter and word activities, plus four exciting number activites.

The tablet is durable and has been dropped and stood on numerous times, but it still works perfectly and has suffered no cosmetic damage.

At 19 months old, R and M aren’t quite at the age where they can play the games, but I know as time goes on, they’ll both enjoy learning and playing on these tablets.