Those wicked Book People dropped by Shaun’s work again, and as well as getting the pack of ten Julia Donaldson books (we’ll talk about those another time), we picked up our first Kipper books by Mick Inkpen – a name we weren’t familiar with, but the books look so lovely we had to try.
As it was, the risk was worth it – Kipper has all kinds of adventures – you get ten books for £10 – so that’s £1 a book too which is extremely reasonable. Mick Inkpen has also written and illustrated the Wibbly Pig books which I’ve seen, but we don’t own – and both sets of books now have tv shows.
The books you get in the I Love Kipper bag are : One Year With Kipper, Hide Me, Kipper!, Kipper’s Toybox, Kipper and Roly, Kipper’s Christmas Eve, Kipper’s Monster, Kipper’s Birthday, Kipper’s Snowy Day, Kipper’s Beach Ball and Kipper. They come in a sturdy plastic carry bag too, which is handy for keeping them all together.
The books? Each is a beautifully illustrated story about things Kipper has done – H will choose two or three to read after lunch and is engrossed – the books are targeted at the age range 2-5, so perfect for her.
The tv series? It looks like it’s not currently on CiTV, so we’ll have to look out for a DVD or some YouTube footage – I suspect it’ll also go down very well…
so actually downsizing and being careful would be a good thing – and I’m now using my Mia Tui clutch bag for my toiletries – so when I switch bags between work and parenting it’s even easier – brilliant! In the end after getting more advice and emailing the Leather Satchel Co people, I went for the 14″ version at £81.
I placed the order on the 21st May, and it arrived on the 25th – in a beautifully wrapped up package. I tore it open, and realised that actually, the size I ordered is only just the right size, and actually I need to do some serious downsizing (in retrospect I probably should have gone for the 15″). Weighing things up, this isn’t actually a massive problem as I do have back trouble, so I wont overload my bag in any way – as the photos show! There’s exactly the right amount of space for everything – but nothing else! It’s an extremely snug fit.
Olly the Little White Van is 
There’s two games. ‘Delivery Race’ involves you directing Olly around the roads to pick up packages in Bumpton – one which I started playing dragging the car (this can be done, and easily) before I realised you could also tap where you want the car to go. H picked this up straight away and had no difficulties and had a sense of pride when she did each level.
Overall the game is quite short, and very straightforward. It doesn’t have any bonuses for completing levels (like, say the City of Friends app), but that’s not a problem – it just means you’ve finished quickly. On the plus side this works if you want to limit the time your child plays on apps, as they’re not on for a long time.
Way back in February we were at The Baby Show, where I’m always eager to try out new things – food wise, that is – especially if there’s free samples being given out. We go out a lot so always need handy snacks, although I think we need to branch out a bit more after keeping Organix in business with their bars! (probably)
Even better, they’ll send some 
Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom are no exception – there’s a brand new DVD ‘
The individual games include :
As a music-loving mummy the biggest plus point for me was the music – I’m not sure if it’s the original Norwegian tunes, but it wasn’t in any way annoying and was really quite pleasant – plus there’s more than one tune in there, so it’s not the same few bars on repeat.
Read Write Phonics was released in April 2012 – and for us a slightly different approach, as it has been launched for Android phones first, rather than heading the Apple way (that’ll follow towards the end of the year). This isn’t a problem for us, as we both have Android phones, hubs was able to put it on his (I’m still on 2.1 for my OS), and we got it up and working quickly.
The ‘Write’ section is a favourite in our house, if only for giving you the chance to write some letters. H is only young (at two years and almost nine months) so occasionally got frustrated when she couldn’t quite get it right – but we found it was a lot easier for her to do with her smaller fingers, than our larger adult ones, so we were often met with a “you’re nearly there!” and “try again!” type comments, which were encouraging and didn’t frustrate her when she didn’t quite do it. I think this aspect would work a lot better on a larger tablet than a phone – but probably for adults (and our big fingers), as H had no problems other than she’d never written anything before. She did manage to write a lot of the easier letters (i, j, o, a, t) so that’s a really good sign!
The ‘Phonics’ section is divided into two sections, small words and big words – and both spell out individual letters you’ll have covered on the earlier sections. I really liked how they’re regular words you’d use every day so there was a good context to it – and nothing too difficult. Also – the way they’re phonetically spelt out is really good – as I’ve found a few games we have will only have one option of how a letter sounds. There’s also combinations, such as words like ‘queen’ breaking it up into qu-ee-n sounds. If you slide your finger quickly along the word it sounds like the actual word, rather than a weird amalgamation of letters – another plus point!
I was pleased that the phonics are all British English – H comes from a Yorkshire Mum, an Australian Dad and has nursery with people from Sutton and Croydon, so her accent is all over the place at the moment (though definitely London), I found the accent here to be nice and clear and with no regional variation. The app features all 44 phonic sounds of the English language, plus all letters and combinations.
