TRU Review: North Pole Camouflage

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Written by Mr. TheBoyandMe who has commandeered this game.

I'm starting to suspect that, somewhere in a deep dark basement, the people who run Smart Games have Ernő Rubik tied to a desk and forced to invent games for them (and not simply as punishment for inventing the Rubik's Clock).

With Camouflage North Pole, Smart Games have another head-scratcher on their hands. 48 different pictures, each representing a different arctic landscape, make up the individual levels of difficult, whilst six mostly transparent pieces are provided that fit into a four-by-four frame; each has either a polar bear, a fish or both printed on it. The challenge is simply to lay these six pieces onto the map so that all the polar bears are on the land and the fish are in the sea!

It takes a few levels to get the hang of how to play, so its advantageous that the first 12 levels give the position of one of the pieces. Once past there, the difficulty ramps up nicely to the verging-on-impossible Expert levels.

One aspect that has been thought through specifically is the packaging; Camouflage itself comes in a rigid plastic box that the individual level cards fit snugly into along with the six puzzle pieces, with a recess in the lid to complete the puzzles in.

As games go, it lacks the “fun” element present in its stablemate “Anti-Virus” that can keep younger children trying different solutions for hours upon end. However, the frustration factor of “just one more try” means that elder children are likely to return to the individual puzzles again and again until they finally crack them.

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We were provided with this game, free of charge, in order to review it for the Toyologist programme. Mr. TheBoyandMe's opinion is unbiased and honest.

ShowOff ShowCase: The First One

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When I started ShowOff ShowCase it was intended to be for three weeks only with three specific themes: Most Popular Post, The One That Should Have Done Better, and Favourite Post. Some very lovely people complained at me when I said that I wasn't going to be carrying it on, and through discussions with them I decided to carry the link-up going every fortnight alternating between The One That Should Have Done Better and a changeable themed post. Loyal bloggers link up every fortnight and for that I am truly grateful.

ShowOff ShowCase is a good opportunity to give old posts an airing and gain more readers and comments. It does rely on the contributors reading each other's posts, otherwise it's all a bit pointless.

One of the aspects that I like about it is that people contribute to the themes and I feel it builds up a little community of bloggers that I respect and enjoy reading. I've just asked on twitter if anyone has any ideas for this weekend's theme and the fabulous Dometic Goddesque has come up with the idea of The First One: your first post!

So fish it out; your first rambling post. Link it up below and let's see what people think. Are you a better writer? Are you worse?!

ShowOff ShowCase

LeapFrog Tag Junior Reading System

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I'll admit to being sceptical about this when I heard that I was going to have it to review. I had misunderstood its purpose, thinking it was more complicated than it is, and I will retract all of my scepticism now.

Because this is fab!

The reading system comprises of the handheld device and the specially created story books. The little handheld gadget is very cute and fits nicely into the palm of a two year old (aimed at 2-4 year olds).There is a very simple on-off button and when the Tag Junior is pressed down against one of the books, the reader in it interprets the specially embedded dots in the surface of the books. Most of the books have over 150 sounds attached to them, not just the written word, but the pictures and even the background have sounds accompanying it.

Set-up is a little bit of a pain because it requires you to connect it to an Internet-accessible computer, download software for each book and then install it onto the Tag Junior. I'd say it took half an hour to do this for the five books that we were provided with, so set-up is definitely needed before letting your little one lose on it. However, I love that you can program your child's name into it, so when it is turned on it greets him, and turned off it says goodbye personally. The downside to the downloading (ooh, that was clever of me) is not only the time, but also that only five books can be stored at any point. While there is a library of over twenty books available, if you wanted to put a sixth one on, you'd have to remove one of those books to upload the other.

I've got to say how completely and utterly indestructable the Tag Junior appears to be! Ok we haven't dropped it into water or driven a car over it, but The Boy has given it a fair few drops on different surfaces and it just rolls along undamaged.

The Tag Junior comes with a book to get you started: , and we were sent four others to review.

  • If I Were: This starter book, which comes with the Tag Junior, is a really endearing story of a little boy imagining his toy animals in their natural habitats. Written in prose, there are amusing sound effects.
  • ABC Animal Orchestra: for each letter of the alphabet there is an illustration of an animal playing an instrument, e.g. Baboon's bassoon. The letter name is pronounced (I'd have preferred the letter sound), the musical instrument sound is played and the words are read out.
  • Toy Story 3 To Imagination and Beyond: The story to this is quite an entertaining one with plenty of sound effects. Unfortunately the voices are not the original ones which doesn't affect The Boy's enjoyment but I find irritating.
  • Cars 2 World Adventure: This is aimed at the older end of the spectrum for the Tag Junior system I suspect. There's not many sounds, the cars' voices are again not the original ones and quite difficult to understand. It's informative rather than fun, although it does introduce the 'reader' to different cultures around the world.
  • Thomas & Friends Best Friends: This is The Boy's favourite, and mine, and daddy's! The story is really lovely, there are plenty of sounds embedded throughout to keep him entertained, and it is the one book out of all five that he keeps going back to.

I would thoroughly recommend this as a way of developing your child's enjoyment of reading books.

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We were provided with the Tag Junior reading system and software titles free of charge as a part of the Toys R Us review programme. My opinion is, as always, honest as both a parent and a teacher.

How Future Friendly Are You?

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I like to think I'm a bit of an eco-warrior. It stems from teaching primary school children about the 4Rs for a good few years:

  • Refuse
  • Reduce
  • Reuse
  • Recycle.

I'm a big believer in the importance of reducing the amount of waste we create. Did you know that 85% of the contents of your bin can be recycled, but on average only 20% is? With the targets that have been introduced in this country, many councils are now offering more facilities for recycling: but it's not just about separating your plastic and cardboard, we need to stop using so many resources and so much packaging in the first place.

Therefore when I was invited by Proctor & Gamble to take part in their Future Friendly campaign, I was very excited. The challenge is to follow the Future Friendly Sustainable Living Activity: the seven day plan involves undertaking three inspired but small acts a day, for a full week. To help people who want to take part come up with these three small tasks, there is a rather fabulous little online tool which I thoroughly recommend visiting (click on the picture to have a go) as it can highlight areas in your house to help save energy or use less resources.

Did you know that the average family wastes £680 a year on uneaten food? £680?! That is shocking and such a waste on resources. How many of us just scrape away the scraps or bin the best befores? To help reduce our food waste (and cut down on our portion sizes) I've signed up to the website LoveFood HateWaste which has a nifty section of hundreds of recipes. Simply select the food that needs using up and it will suggest some recipes! (Action 1 done!) I've also started shopping online having planned in advance what food we need to buy for the month without being tempted by all the extra goodies at the ends of aisles. (Action 2). Buying some items in bulk can also cut down on the amount of packaging that is used, e.g. larger packs of dried pasta, washing-up liquid, toilet rolls, etc. (Action 3).

Factoid: Did you know that recycling a glass jar or bottle saves enough energy to power a laptop for 25 minutes? As the average family uses 500 jars a year, that's a lot of blogging and tweeting power!

I've actually followed the online tool above and found all of the little titbits of information that can help me to be Future Friendly. The irony is that it told me to print off the list to keep a reference! Funnily enough, I've saved it as a PDF instead!

Here are some of the 21 things that we will be trying to implement over our Future Friendly Activity:

  1. using watering cans to water the plants as opposed to a hose which uses 1000 litres of water every hour it is on (should be easy enough to do, The Boy's water-table is a great water-butt at the moment!;
  2. turning the washing machine down to 30° instead of 40° (Ariel powder and liquitabs are formulated to work at 30° which uses 30% less energy each wash than at 40°);
  3. use saucepans that fit the hob (this is for hubby not me. He always uses a medium pan on the large gas with it up full-whack. So much heat is wasted over the sides of the pan);
  4. measure out the water that I need to boil before putting it in the kettle;
  5. putting wet (not dirty) kitchen towel into the compost bin, along with scrap paper that's been used on both sides. A good compost bin is full of compost critters; they like small holes and gaps created by scrunched up paper which is biodegradable;
  6. install toilet hippos (a few pounds from DIY stores and can save 3 litres of water per flush);
  7. turn off the extractor fan in the downstairs toilet, it's not needed and uses too much power;
  8. put on my cardigan and slippers rather than knocking on the heating!

I'm not going to write all 21 targets up in this post, but I will pop back in a week's time and tell you which other inspired little acts I've got up to with The Boy.

I was provided with a recycling box and a range of P&G products to help me complete this project. My opinions are my own.

Get Digging!

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I love my garden, seriously love it. When we moved in it was a 70ft x 35ft suburban, ex-council rectangle of:

  • antiquated buxus hedges
  • a dangerous greenhouse
  • a random brick base for, I suspect, a long-gone shed
  • a concrete path leading to <shudder> a concrete washing line

and that was basically it. Oh, and a hell of a lot of broken glass. Six and a half years later and we're still picking bits out of the flowerbeds. First thing to go, before we'd even done anything to the house, was the path and washing line. I blogged about the transformation back in May 2011, linking it up to The Gallery.

I drew a plan, to scale, and laminated it.

Hubby dug, I directed. I weeded, he moved stuff. We had some fabulous barbecues and parties in the garden, I grew copious amounts of vegetables, I lost copious amounts of brassicas due to a vengeful cabbage white butterfly. Everything  panned out almost as I wanted it to.

One area that has been neglected significantly is the vegetable patch and herb garden. Over the last year, I've had to remove half the railway sleeper defined vegetable patches to create more play space for The Boy. I had another go this year at growing vegetables, confident in my previous success, but my seedlings died when I went away on holiday. The herb garden was going great guns, until the fence against it was blown down in a gale, and it crushed the rosemary bush, thyme plant and the coriander. When my dad replaced the fence panel, he put pay to the remaining rosemary bush, so that all that is there at present is an overgrown lavender bush.

I'm not painting a good picture am I?

For a keen gardener it's quite distressing.

Therefore when Bosch contacted me and asked me if I'd like to take part in a competition to transform part or all of my garden, I jumped at the chance. During the two months that I have to complete the challenge I will receive support from Bosch Lawn and Garden, GreenThumb lawn care, and Best4Plants in the form of garden equipment, lawn treatments and plants for the areas I'm making-over.

There are eleven of us 'competing' for the prize of a day with leading gardening expert Helen Yemm and two tickets to RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2012.

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