The Magic Of My Name is a story book for children aged around 0-8 which is personalised for your child. You choose boy or girl, hair colour and then add their own name, which becomes focal to the entire story...


The book arrives wrapped in card and plastic to protect it from the elements during shipping, and I was impressed with the quality and weight. Each page is thick glossy paper. Our book is a hardbacked copy and it's nicely bound and will wipe clean from small spills.

StikBots are bendy little characters who have moving arms, legs, torso and head. Their hands and feet are suckers, so they stay where you put them and are ideal for creating stop-motion animation films. Perfect then that they've released their own StikBot ZANIMATION Studio.


The StikBot ZANIMATION Studio is suitable for age 4+ and we've been sent one to review. It promises to make a movie director out of us all and includes everything you'll need barring an actual device - smartphone or tablet. My son is using a 4 year old phone and the app. still worked on his old Android version.


Included in the box are 2 StikBots, a tripod, staging and scenery. We were also sent the Hair Styling Set with a gold StikBot and 9 different hats and hairstyles.

This post is written by Nikolai Catrow

Everyone thought about a future profession in childhood, and if your dream came true – you are lucky! As show numerous opinion polls, the happiest people in their profession are those whose work is directly related to travel. Such a work brings pleasure but demands good health and stress resistance from a person.


So, you do not like to stay at home but you love to travel? Choose a profession from the list that will allow you to travel around the world:

If you are going to make something cool then you want people to see it. What better place to display your creations than your own head? BrickHats come in 6 different colours and somewhat bizarrely proved the perfect canvas for my partner to create an amazing tribute to the host of The Joy Of Painting, Bob Ross...


Usually I accept an item for review because I think we'll like it, but just occasionally I'm more intrigued than certain. I honestly couldn't decide about BrickHats, but it turns out they're actually brilliant...

A friend of mine today explained on her Facebook page that her family would no longer feature on her blog. She'll continue to talk with authority and be a fabulous advocate in her field, but won't share personal stories. This was at the surprise direct request of her 9 year old.


When your children are little it may not occur to you that you are sharing anything they wouldn't like shared - you may not even know. I think you get away with this scott-free for a shorter period than most people might think.

On Easter Sunday we were invited to see a private screening of The Boss Baby at the Hilton Hotel in Manchester. I've never watched a movie in a hotel before and it was such a lovely event and so well organised that I thought I owed it to them to write about it.


The Hilton Hotel are rightly proud of their association with animated family movie The Boss Baby. They want to promote their family friendly side, so that families know they can come and stay and be fully catered for - in fact, children stay and eat for free.

It really is the best job in the world going through all of your photos each month - thank you to everyone who has shared their smiles using the #TBCSmiles hashtag. They're infectious and an absolute joy to look at. Some of the brightest smiles are at the bottom of this post.

Easter Egg Hunt 2016

I hope this past month has been a good one for you. Sunshine and the promise of some time off over Easter make everything a little less heavy and the chance to get out and have fresh air without freezing is very welcome!

My two boys had a surprise early Easter gift in the post yesterday courtesy of Activision and Skylanders Imaginators. They've already played the game through a couple of times, but character releases shake everything up and add their own unique characteristics...


New characters have been released in waves and we've been sent the characters in Wave 4 to review including 2 very special edition Easter variant characters. The boxes themselves are gorgeous - the illustrations are really well done.

iExplore books are a series of books with an associated app. which brings them to life via Augmented Reality using a smartphone or tablet. iExplore Bugs by Hannah Wilson is fresh off the press at Carlton Kids Books and we've been sent a copy to review.


iExplore Bugs is an excellent quality hardback full colour book. 32 pages full of everything your average child could ever possibly need to know about the most fantastic and exotic bugs alive, including the Goliath Bird-Eating Spider and Queen Alexandra's Birdwing Butterfly.

The Digital Kids Show will return to Manchester's Event City this November 18-20th. Filled with all kinds of things that computer-obsessed youngsters love, we went last year and our boys had an awesome time.


This year the show is over 3 days and there is absolutely loads to do. Most of the programme will be the same each day, but some of the main stage acts and presentations will vary.

Everything in the giant Event City Hall and the show is especially suited to families with children of any age who would happily spend all day at a computer, whether playing, designing, editing, watching or learning, or all of those at once.