The Totally Wild Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas by Jen Green is exactly what you'd hope. A big book with large scale colour pages full of all of the different animals you can encounter wherever you are on the globe.


Inside there are global maps and many larger scale maps for great chunks of the world, plus absolutely loads of information for each. Photographs and text support illustrations and although this is a fact book, the language used is modern and relaxed, so it doesn't feel like an educational book. Obviously it still has plenty to teach almost anyone...

Clickbait is the description for an outlandish headline or title designed to make anything seem exciting, although in the case of this game it's probably a fair description... Suitable for 3 or more players aged 14+, it's your job to think up the snappiest and most enticing clickbait. It's fast. fun and the answers can be hilarious - and sometimes genius! Sometimes not....


My game arrived in ridiculously exciting packaging, and I was even forced to open it immediately and play a test game with my 8 and 9 year old boys. Clearly they couldn't resist the clickbait... and possibly the very cool, unusually-shaped box.


Inside the box is everything you'll need, including pencils and paper for 8, game cards, instructions and special letter dice.

Disney On Ice is back and it's latest tour, Disney On Ice presents Dream Big! will arrive at Manchester Arena on the 10th October and we will be going along to review. Presented once again by Feld Entertainment, it promises big things and is sure to have the incredible skill and quality of previous shows.

The tagline for this year's show is 'Every Story Begins With A Dream' and that couldn't really be a more perfect description for any great story, whether true or fiction. The show brings together a collection of inspiring tales featuring characters with a desire to explore the depths, heights and horizons of their dreams.


This will be the first UK show to feature Moana and the greatest demigod on 2 legs, Maui, as well as 8 other tales of courage and heroism, including Frozen, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Tangled. The awesome Maleficent, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty will all make an appearance, as well as lots of the classic Disney favourites, including the icons Donald Duck and Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Treads shoes are designed especially with longevity in mind. Sensible, water-resistant shoes which have special reinforcement and a moulded sole which is firmly fixed into the shoe.

My youngest is a livewire. He never stops moving and even when he's sitting down he's kicking his feet and rubbing them across the floor. After he destroyed 3 pairs of shoes between Christmas and April, I was delighted when I was asked to review Treads.


You can see my Treads school shoes review here, I was impressed from the start, but the important thing was always going to be "will they survive?". Just how realistic is that 1 year guarantee? I promised I'd return to them and now seems as good a point as any... and I'll be more than happy to come back again if they still fit in another 4 months time...

To see as we do, our brain takes the information it receives from both eyes, puts it together and makes sense of it. Your eyes can't take in everything all at once non-stop, so our brain fills in any missing information. Sometimes it gets it a little bit wrong...

EQUIPMENT:
Yourself
Paper - scrap paper is fine
A pen or something to draw with
Optional - A photograph

Last night we were guests of Bolton Octagon to review their brand new show - Gulliver's Travels. They are unable to use their building while it's being refurbished and this performance was taking place outdoors at Queen's Park. We had no idea how this was going to work. My 8 and 9 year old boys were very excited to see how a giant Gulliver was going to be portrayed in the park. I have to say that so was I...

It was excellent. Probably the cleverest and most ambitious project we'll see this year, with a huge cast and amazing backdrop, and executed beautifully.


Gulliver's Travels is, of course, the fantastical story of Gulliver, a brilliant storyteller who is shipwrecked and finds himself visiting several strange lands on his quest for home. This is the second of Bolton Octagon's 'Out and About' productions that we've seen - we also reviewed Summer Holiday earlier this year.

Normally we need to add or remove heat to change something from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas. Non-Newtonian Fluids are a liquid when left alone, but they behave more like a solid when we try to move them quickly or apply pressure... It can pour, but if you hit it, it can feel as hard as rock.



A Non-Newtonian Fluid is a fluid that breaks Newton's Law Of Viscosity. Viscosity is what we would call 'thickness' (for example, oil is 'thicker' than milk) and it usually affects how quickly something will move. Non-Newtonian fluids will pour, but they don't quite follow the rest of the standard rules for liquids.

Mainstream books can be great, but they can also simply be popular because they have a lot of money for advertising. It's easy to miss real gems amongst the mountains of titles available, and so whenever I have chance I like to review books from smaller publishers and self-published books. Here are 3 shorter books for children from Matador Press.


My boys and I snuggled up and looked at them, because even at 8 and 9, sometimes it's nice to read a book together...

This is a great little activity which takes seconds and, like the Gluten activity earlier, it helps children understand what it is that really makes up the foods they eat. We are going to scare colour into running away...


EQUIPMENT:
A breakfast bowl
About 2oz milk - enough to cover the bottom of the bowl. Any milk should work, although I've not tried them all!
A tiny amount of food colouring
2 drops of washing up liquid

It is time for this month's smiles, and it has been a pretty hard month for us. The Summer holidays are full of memories and waiting for results is very difficult to stomach, even if you disregard anything about the stress of the actual outcome.

Our young people, no doubt like yours, worked so hard and all had to keep going when they already had more than enough stress. Our household was not a happy place yesterday and one of our teenager's future career depended on really tough entrance qualifications. Thankfully that wait is now over and it's with a huge amount of pride that I say we will have 3 young people at University next month.

Not getting what you hoped never makes you a failure, it just makes it more difficult to take that path. There are a million more routes and a billion other options. You are so much more than your exam results.


Yesterday marked 4 years since we lost our 16 year old, Elspeth, and it made this week especially hard. I wrote about that yesterday, and I have to thank everyone who sent messages, replied to posts, commented, changed their profile photo or shared a sunflower. You are always there for us, and we couldn't be more thankful. To have so many people who care makes us richer than any amount of money ever could. Thank you.