Robots are amazing tools that can teach your children a range of skills. The Q-Scout from Robobloq is a metal 65 piece remote control robot which you build yourself and programme using your phone or tablet. It can line follow, obstacle avoid and play music, and with 2 levels of coding built on open source Arduino, it should have the longevity to keep your child's interest for several years.

Robobloq have sent us the basic Q-Scout set to review...


The packaging is a nice sturdy box and easy to open with a lovely magnetic closure. Everything is neatly packaged in 3 layers and it's a gorgeous set to unveil.

We've just taken a good look at the new releases from Rubik's for Summer 2019 and John Adams have kindly offered one of my readers 2 of the new puzzles for themselves. One winner will win a Rubik's Edge and a Rubik's Cage, together worth well over £25.

This Summer Rubik's have a whole new 'Summer Scrambles' assortment of toys, games and fidgets to play with and they've sent us a big bundle to look at. Rubik's are small, portable toys which are great for taking away with you on holiday or visiting relatives, and they are perfect for entertaining your children on long journeys.


We've been sent Rubik’s Cage, Rubik’s Edge, Rubik’s Orbit, Rubik’s Block, Rubik’s Match and Rubik’s 3x3. The variety is massive and we are long-time fans of Rubik's Cube here, my partner can even complete one in 26 moves (or something), so he was one of the first to want to dip into this lot.


Rubik’s 3x3 - the classic cube that we all know. So much better than cheap imitations, and I have actually managed to complete it a couple of times, but don't ask me to do it unless you've got about 4 hours while I figure it out.


I've got a little room for improvement, the current record (held by Yusheng Du) stands at 3.47 seconds *gulp*. RRP £10 - there is also an environmentally packaged version which is cheaper - nice one Rubik's.

The smiles are a day late this month, as they have been before in August, but that doesn't make them any less beautiful. Sorry if I confused anyone with the delay.

5 years ago we lost one of our children, and that is why #TBCSmiles began. I started collecting my family's smiles to remind me we can do this, and being happy is what it's all about in the end, so making smiles is exactly why we keep going.


A HUGE thank you to everyone of you who shares your smiles with us, they are contagious and wonderful, and really do brighten up my day. Anyone can join in - just use the hashtag #TBCSmiles on a smile on any photo on Instagram!

For the next month if you happen to have a sunflower in your photo, I'm working with Sudocrem and you can enter my giveaway for a sunflower t-shirt if you take a photo of someone with a sunflower, and one person will win a mural for their school. I'm not suggesting cheating, but we won't be asking for proof that it's actually your sunflower - a big grin and a golden flower will be enough...

5 years ago today we woke up to find one of our children had died. I've never gone to bed without checking on everyone in my house since. Each night I tell them I love them, and I'll see them in the morning. They have to answer. They have to repeat it back to me. I have to know that they intend to still be there.

Everyone who loses someone they love to suicide is a survivor. When you lose them you need to know why? But to understand why is the worst that could ever happen, so you can't ever understand exactly why. That door has to stay shut. Forever. Your job is to let those questions go, and carry on.

In the beginning everything seems so hopeless, pointless.  To keep going is the bravest and hardest thing you'll ever do, and 5 years on, I am so proud of my family for fighting through everything.


We have three big grown up kids at uni, something I'm incredibly proud to tell anyone, but whenever I say it, I know there should be four. I know that if she had done a 3 year course, Elspeth would be graduating now, alongside her school friends (well done to all of you who graduated this year - I hope you have something awesome to do next).

Two of our big kids have "moved out". Gone to live in the world of bills and private landlords. One of them has moved in with his boyfriend, and genuinely it makes my heart glow to see them together. Always though, you wish Elspeth could have met him and given her seal of approval - probably by taking the p1ss.

She's never truly gone, she's always there in your head. We all feel it, everything we do is tinged by a heavy atmosphere that we have to claw through to stay in the moment. The unsaid.

In some ways it still feels like this isn't a reality, that I could still wake up and find out I dreamt it. Life happens 'to us' much more now, we have less control over where we are going. I really don't have a good chronology of the last 5 years, just a jumbled mess of memories. It's like my brain tried to hold on to the important stuff, but it wasn't quite sure what that was.

We really are huge fans of Big Potato Games and it's rare we find any of their games we don't like. I wasn't sure if 20 Second Showdown would be my thing, but they sent us a copy for review and it is brilliant! Active, but not too active. Silly, but not too silly. Fiercely competitive and frantic at times? Ohhh yes...


We were sent a whole box of treats and goodies to make an evening of it and 20 Second Showdown is suitable for 5 players or more, so we even invited a friend over for the first play through. As with all Big Potato Games, the rules are simple to understand, but it's once you start playing that you can really get into the swing of it.

In the late Summer a lot of people already share sunflower photos with us, and they are all absolutely beautiful to see, especially as our garden is pretty much a peat bog and we can't grow our own (we've tried many, many times). This year, for anyone who wishes, you can share a photo of your child(ren) with a sunflower and have a chance to win a professional mural for their school or nursery - and I have a couple of gorgeous specially printed sunflower t-shirts to give away too.

We don't have many sunflowers growing nearby unfortunately, but we do at least have plenty of trees - and my 10 year old, who is just about as tall as me now and definitely growing...


Hopefully you have grown your own sunflowers this Summer. They're easy to grow from their exciting black and white seed, and almost all UK gardens can easily grow a 5ft beauty. There really is no better flower for children because the end result is so useful and impressive, and maybe even taller than they are.

Thank you to Sim for this sunflower

Billy Stink's Incredible Circus is a recent release from Book Guild Publishing, who sent us a copy for review. Written by Rik Arron, this is a very special book as the entire text is a poem, but it's still a full length short story, with some great little illustrations by Nicola Anderson.

And it's really very good...


Billy Stink runs a circus and one day a young boy, Titch, turns up. Titch has run away and the circus people have no way to find Titch's home and family, and he won't tell them anything, so they welcome him into their extended family and let him earn his keep working for the circus.

This month Asmodee have sent us Pandemic Board Game to review for the Blogger Boardgame Club. Although I didn't own a copy, I have played Pandemic in the past, so before we even opened the box we knew we'd have a good evening.


Matt Lacock's multi award-winning game Pandemic was first released by Z-Man Games in 2007 and is so popular that it's spawned a host of different editions. The aim of the game is simple, prevent plague from infecting all of humanity and ultimately save our species from extinction...

X-Gen VR is a brand new Virtual Reality Centre which has opened in Stockport and excitingly they invited us down to have a look and a play on all of their new VR systems and games machines. We are all gamers, so it was a unanimous yes.

Unlike a lot of opportunities to play with VR, X-Gen VR allow children to join in from age 7, and have hundreds of available games, including absolutely masses which are age and ability-appropriate for any user. You can shoot aliens, race bikes, ride rollercoasters or take a canal trip to Amsterdam!


X-Gen VR is easy to find, at one of the entrances to the Merseyway Shopping Centre, opposite the WarHammer Game Shop. There is lots of parking nearby (the Merseyway Centre's own parking has a 6ft1in limit). Our GPS tried to send us in via the main entrance of the shopping centre - this one was much closer...