The Toadstool Christmas wishlist

The Toadstool is running a Big Christmas Wishlist blogger competition with the prize £300 worth of toys. They’re also offering the chance to become a Toy Toad Tester – an opportunity the Doves would relish.

POD loves pretend play and role playing so the first item on our Toadstool Christmas wishlist is the Haba pretend play doctor suitcase. POD has an Aqua Doodle she calls her ‘nurses bag’ and frequently tells her toys she’s a doctor. She’d love to take temperatures, dress wounds and give medicine.

Not only would it be a great gift for Christmas but also for her birthday. She will be three on Christmas Day this year.

She has an incredible imagination, recently I found her collecting dinosaur juice in her laundry basket! She loves dressing up and spent half of last weekend as an Eighties pumpkin witch.  This Haba American Indian brave eagle costume would be perfect for role playing and adventures – no doubt her dollies would be enlisted as her tribe!

The Janod giant circus train set and playworld is superb. With acrobats that stand on each other’s heads, train carriages that carry animals and a monkey on a bike, it would add a whole new level to imaginative play. Given POD’s favourite phrase is “hello everybody welcome to my circus”, she’d be over the moon to have her own.

POD is lucky that she has a granny that makes wonderful hand-made dresses and woolens. We spotted the rather lovely Habba doll Little Scamp Mette which is a soft doll the same size as her hard faced dollies. POD’s imaginative play with her dollies includes talking to them, changing their clothes and ensuring they’re wearing a clean nappy.

Pretend play frequently includes “peoples”. At home these often end up in a bag as their fire station home has limited space. Playing with “peoples” is an interactive experience for POD as she talks to them and refers to herself in the third person. This fabulous Plan toys playhouse with furniture has 3 floors and open sides – she’d be beside herself!

She’s reached the stage where she wants to play games. The Sleepy Princess Haba game is great as it’s for all the family. It’s based on an adaptation of the Princess and The Pea – a story she loves. She already has a competitive streak so it would be interesting to see how she’d get on.

The Janod Nutty Squirrel Balancing Game is made of solid wood with the objective to pile up as many hazelnuts as possible on the squirrel without making them fall. This would be a huge help to POD’s motor skills.

POD loves the backpack she has for nursery, often wanting to wear it despite its size. The Lilliputiens Liz Ladybird back pack would be a great accessory for when we’re out. POD is fiercely independent, she’d be ecstatic to have a bag she could carry herself. Not only would she fill it, she’d play with it too. Likely it would be called “ladybird bag”.

The final choice is the rather plump but adorable Worry Eater – Sorgenfresser Schnulli. The idea behind it is that you draw or write down your worries and feed them into Schnulli’s mouth. The mouth is then zipped shut with all the worries banished by morning. POD has had dinosaurs and lions in her room before so Schnulli would be ideal to keep her feeling safe.

You can find photographs of the Doves Toadstool Christmas Wishlist on our Toadstool Pinterest board. We thoroughly enjoyed a rather longer than intended browse of  The Toadstool website. They offer a wide range of pre-school toys that are good value, beautiful and kind to the environment which is exactly why we’d love to work with them.