We bought this for my daughter at Christmas when my daughter was 6 months old. I was looking for toys which are fun but educational and will last for a while, this is why I liked to look of this toy.

~ Cost and Availability ~

I bought this from Amazon for around £15, at the moment it is on there for £19.29. It is also available at many other toy retailers i.e. ELC, Tesco, Mothercare, ToyRus all for around £20-25.

I understand that this is quite a costly toy, however, I feel that its variety and length of use it is worth the money.

~ The Toy ~

The recommended age for this toy is 6 months to 3 years, which I feel is about right. My daughter was 6 months and sitting on her own when we got this.

The toy consists of a number of aspects which keeps the interest for a variety of ages.

The basket itself is a plastic picnic basket with a cute cartoon style face, with a lid which opens both sides and a handle. The basket is electronic using 3 AA batteries, we are still on our first set of batteries 4 months later. There are two electronic settings "shapes & colours" and "music".

Shapes & Colours setting - the basket talks to you either when you open and close the lid or press the "butterfly" button on the basket. It asks questions regarding the food items, shapes and colours.

Music setting - when either opening/closing the lid or pressing the butterfly button the basket sings a couple of songs relating to picnics

With the basket there are a number of picnic items, two shape sorting plates, two cups, two forks and 6 different food items which are shapes either circle, triangle or square, which fit into the plate shapes and a picnic blanket.

The basket firstly encourages the fine motor skills of picking up the separate items in the early months. The size of the food items are perfect for practicing the pincer grip and passing items between hands. My daughter also enjoys banging the different items together to make different sounds developing cause and effect.

Then my daughter got into opening and closing things, which she loved this toy for this as the lid makes different noises when you open/close the lids.

Then my daughter enjoyed rummaging through the basket with all the items inside and choosing which items she wanted to pick up. This encourages her visual and choice making skills.

Now she enjoys emptying the basket then placing (or more normally throwing) the items back into the basket.

This toy also encourages sharing, as I sit with my daughter when she is playing and point and ask different items for her to pass to me. When she is a little older this is good and there is two of each item for more role playing sharing.

This toy is also good for encouraging vocabulary and shape/colour recognition, as you can ask for different items like the round orange or triangle melon etc.

My daughter is a little young at the moment to understand shape sorting, however, she did work out she can put the round items inside the cups, but the triangle items do not fit. When she is playing you can see her thinking and looking at things, so I don't think it will be long before she can work out the shapes sorting into the plates.

We recently went camping and took this toy with us. We found that my daughter and her cousin (7 months) both enjoyed playing with it together. Also my friends daughter who is 2 years old, also really enjoyed playing with this toy, but in a slightly more role playing way.

~ Conclusion ~

I feel that this toy is a great learning aid developing a lot of different aspect varying for a wide range of ages. Well worth the cost!