We’re on our second instalment of our Interplay adventure this month as we review their ‘Bug Safari’ kit. Endorsed by Nick Baker, the kit is part of their My Living World range.
When this box arrived in the post I was actually surprised at how small it was and wondered if we might be a bit disappointed. Not one to judge a book box by its cover size I opened it up to find that actually, Interplay have managed to squeeze quite a lot into that small package.
For the recommended retail price of £9.99 your little adventurer will be equipped with:
- Field lens
- Bug tongs
- Viewing pot with magnifier lid
- Brush
- Tweezers
- Colour instruction booklet (20 pages)
We set to work looking for bugs at home …
Doesn’t everyone garden wearing a ninja turtle outfit, arched over the path way?
Unfortunately, we don’t actually have a garden so the only creatures we found were a few ants, a snail who wouldn’t come out and say hello, and this little guy …
Failure was not an option for us, so we ditched the front yard and headed over to visit someone who has a huge garden, where we had infinitely more success!
Look at our haul!
We were really excited to find such a large number of snails, and very carefully picked them up with our bug tongs. We didn’t want to disturb them too much though so once we’d had a little look we put them back.
The next little critter we found was a huge family of woodlouse! It was pretty tricky trying to pick them up with the tweezers! Eventually we just used our hands instead and had a really good look at them using the field lens. I couldn’t actually manage a photo of that particular investigation because trying to help Rowan with the lens and trying to take a photo at the same time is not physically possible! For reference though, this is the lens:
It really isn’t very big at all as you can see from my photo, but it was just the right size for Rowan and Louis to be able to use. The other piece of equipment the boys used quite a bit was the viewing pot.
The magnifying lid is a bit stiff to get on and off so an adult needs to be nearby, particularly if you have an especially fast moving critter! Can you spot the snail that made its way home with us? He got caught up in the pine cones!
We had a great time exploring with the Interplay Bug Safari kit and for less than a tenner I think it’s a great box of tricks, suitable for a child just starting to explore the natural world. The recommended age for this is five and over, though Rowan is four and only had trouble getting the lid on and off the pot. That was applicable to both of them though and I’m sure it will ease in time. Everything else was easy enough for them both to use.
The thing we didn’t use from the kit was the brush. We didn’t really find a use for it this time around but I’m sure it’ll come in handy soon!
Disclaimer: we were sent the Interplay Bug Safari kit for the purpose of this review. As always, the opinions are my own.