Merry from Patch of Puddles gave me a chance to review one of the pre-school toys from her Play Merrily toy website. After having a look through her site, I chose to review one of the BigJigs toys as I knew my train and car obsessed two-year olds would love them.
The BigJigs Wooden Roadway – Figure of Eight Roadway Set arrived in the post at the perfect time. The entire family had been knocked flat by a chest infection. While the boys were getting better and starting to go stir crazy, Husband and I were still rough and just wanted to laze around with the heating on clutching our Lemsips. The arrival of the BigJigs box was like a ray of light in our otherwise dark and gloomy week.
The BigJigs Roadway Set is a figure of eight jigsaw road track that includes houses, people, traffic lights and trees. The age on the box says three years plus, but I knew that my boys would love it and would be more than capable of playing with it even though they’re only two years and four months.
We opened it up straight away and Husband (being the control freak) sat down with the boys and built it just like the picture, suddenly forgetting his man-flu. Within minutes the boys were driving the cars around the track, and it didn’t take long before their own variety of cars joined the BigJigs cars on the road.
T1 has a particular fondness (obsession) for bridges so was very excited that he could drive his cars backwards and forwards over the bridge. T2 is always more interested in how things work, so once he’d had fun driving the cars around he started to pull the jigsaw track apart to see how the pieces fit together.
It wasn’t long before they’d taken the entire set to pieces and were rebuilding it as a long track. For the first time in a long time I watched them take turns putting the next piece of the jigsaw in place, without fighting, screaming or biting! Once they’d build it across the rug, they unpicked it again and built it on the coffee table. Then it all moved over to the window ledge. All in all it kept them busy for the entire day and when I finally came to pack it back into its box at bedtime there were tears.
It’s definitely the favourite toy of the moment and I think it will stay in the number one spot for quite some time. I can’t imagine much topping it because it brings together their fascination with building and cars. Now every morning, even before T2 starts to ask for chips at 7am (as he does every single day without fail), they ask for their ‘train track’. I’m already planning which extra sets to buy to add to it – having something that encourages them to play together nicely like this is worth every penny!
This toy was provided to me free of charge for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own.
.
I love that! We have wooden train track but I think my toddler would love a road set.
I bet they would. And the best bit is that the parts are so sturdy they withstand being thrown around (and even, on occasions, being chewed by the naughty puppy!)
Looks like fun, will keep this in mind for when my two are older 🙂
Usually my boys are terrible with toys that come with lots of parts – they post the bits behind the sofa or, if they’re thin enough, down the gaps in the floorboards. But for some reason this captures their attention and they just play with it for hours. It’s well worth it for a bit of peace and quiet!