A good way to stimulate your baby. (Beanstalk Lion Mat Gym)

Member Name: SamPerry

Product:	Beanstalk Lion Mat Gym
Date:	15/11/08 (214 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of differenet activities to amuse your little one.

Disadvantages: The foam arches were a little difficult to keep upright at first.

A friend bought my son the Beanstalk lion mat play gym when he was born; they purchased it from Argos for the price of £19.99.

The gym comes in a small box and you have to assemble it yourself, but it is very easy to do. The mat itself is a quilted mat with a big, lions head. The lion's mane is made of crinkly material that makes a noise when you scrunch it, the mat is very soft and has two paws sticking out of each side. The mat is orange and yellow, but the paws are blue and green, the colours are a nice, pastel colour, not a bright, harsh colour.

To assemble the dangling toys on the play gym, you are supplied with two long pieces of bendy foam; these have toys hanging from them. All you do is attach the plastic piece at each end of the foam to the plastic bit underneath each of the paws, you attach each end of one foam piece diagonally across the lions body, this then holds the two pieces of foam in an arch that goes over the play mat. We found it slightly difficult to get the arches to stay in place at first, but we did eventually manage to keep them up!

There are five toys that dangle from the foam arches. There is a blue and yellow monkey, when you press his tummy he squeaks. There is a yellow and orange lion; his tummy is shaped like a circle, with a hole in it so that the baby can easily grab him. There is a green elephant, which again has a round tummy with a hole in the middle so the baby can easily hold him. There is an orange giraffe, he is made of cord so has a different texture to the other toys, he also squeaks. In the centre of the foam bars is what can only be described as a kind of spider!! It doesn't have a face to it, it is just a round orange thing with 6 legs, and each leg is made of different material so that the baby has different textures to feel, this also rattles. All the toys can be removed easily, as they are attached with a Velcro loop from the top of them, so if they need washing they can come off very easily; the mat also washes in the washing machine which came in handy as Rhys tended to throw up on his every day!!

Rhys loved his play gym and he used it every day up until about 2 weeks ago when I felt he was bored of it as he was almost 6 months old, so we washed it and put it away for our next baby. He loved to play with the toys and loved to pull them off and play with them by himself. When he was first born, he would lay mesmerized by the toys dangling above him. We also used the mat by itself as something that Rhys could lay on to protect the floor, we just removed the foam bars and this then left the lion play mat for him to lay on.

Summary: My son loved playing on his.