Bigjigs Wooden Safari Animal Building Blocks Review

A little while ago we applied for the chance to become a Bigjigs Play Patrol Agent. We are delighted to have progressed to the final phase of the application process and now all that stands in our way is this all important mission!

Bigjigs Play Patrol Agents are highly trained little people who complete secret missions for Bigjigs by putting fun to the test!

R and M’s mission, which they excitedly accepted, was to test out these wooden safari animal building blocks.

The blocks arrived in a brown, bubble wrap envelope which can be recycled or in our home used for our girls to draw on at a later date!

The blocks themselves had minimal packaging which is great because it meant I could unwrap it quickly and easily without any fuss or scissors.

It’s great to know that Bigjigs endeavor to use the minimum packaging required to safely deliver products to their customers. I love it when I buy something which can be quickly and easily unwrapped. Especially toys. One of my bugbears is when a toy comes with fiddly wires and plastic bits that you have to twist or cut to get the toy out!

The wooden safari animal building blocks are made from high quality, responsibly sourced materials. It’s also good to know that Bigjigs use sustainable sources for all of their wooden toys.

There are 32 play pieces in total and all except four have a brightly coloured pattern or design on them. The other four are plain wooden blocks.

After I took them out of the packaging, I placed all the blocks into the blue drawstring bag that comes with it and I handed it over to R so that her and M could start exploring.

At two of years of age both R and M really enjoy putting things in their toy bags and taking them back out again. So before we looked in the bag, R and M felt the contents of the bag and I asked them what they thought was inside.

A fun little game in which M instantly guessed correctly and said blocks!

R and M took the blocks out of the bag together and I asked them if they could tell me what picture was on the blocks and what colour they were.

These blocks are suitable for children aged over 12 months. The blocks are the perfect size for little hands to hold and explore. Plus when your baby starts to teeth and wants to chew everything in site, these blocks could come in handy to help cut their teeth! They have no rough edges and are pretty durable.

We’re currently learning about shapes, so these will be great to show them both the different shapes.

Some of the blocks are round, some are square, some are tall and others are short! They’re great for stacking, but also great for creating a safari scene full of animals

There’s a panda bear which R and M call a cow because it’s black and white! There’s also a giraffe, lion, bear, hippo and cat.

As we played with the animals we talked about what colours they were, what food we thought they ate and what sounds each animal made.

After building some towers and knocking them down again, which is great for teaching children about cause and effect, R and M decided it would be fun for the animals to ride the Lego train!

This then lead to us finding all of our animal toys and zoo enclosures. Before long we had a fully operational zoo with train to take passengers from the zoo car park direct to the animals!

After a little snack in the kitchen R and M decided that they wanted to keep playing with the blocks.

We’re also learning about colours and numbers so I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to do some counting.

We put the blocks into the drawstring bag and one by one we took the blocks out and counted them as we went.

As mentioned above I’m teaching our girls about shapes. They both know what shape a circle is and M is really good at drawing them!

We decided to get our pencils and crayons out and draw around the blocks.

I then wrote down next to each drawing the name of each shape and we sat on the sofa for a while pointing and naming the shapes.

R and M played for quite some time with the blocks and one thing I was so pleased to watch them do together was share the blocks with each other!

M had the drawstring bag and R passed her one block at a time to put them back into the bag!

We also discovered that it’s great fun to push the blocks down the slide in the garden!

Even the big kids enjoyed playing with the blocks!

 

The blocks fit easily into the drawstring bag that comes with them and it means that they can be taken anywhere with you.

If you’re going on a long car journey or on a plane you can bring them with you to help keep your child entertained.

We enjoyed playing with the wooden safari animal building blocks indoors and outdoors. When the weather warms up a bit and we get the paddling pool out in the garden, we always bring a few of the girls toys outdoors and lay them on a picnic blanket so that they can be enjoyed outdoors and we’ll definitely be doing this with these blocks.

For £11.99 I think these blocks are great value for money. It’s a toy that can be continually used as your child gets older and the different games and ways to play with the blocks are endless. 


About Bigjigs


Bigjigs Toys LTD was established in 1985 by Peter and Liz Ireland. Peter and Liz were both teachers in their past careers so wanted to develop a company that would make education and learning fun through the use of traditional wooden toys.


Over the past 26 years Peter and Liz’s two sons’ have joined the family business and have added an extended Bigjigs family, through a team of dedicated staff. 


Bigjigs Toys has become one of the leading wooden toy designers, importers and distributors in the UK.


You can read more about BigJigs Toys Ltd here.

For the purpose of this review were sent one pack of wooden safari animal building blocks from Bigjigs.