During the summer months, you can hardly see the grass on my back garden due to the amount of outdoor toys we have. Since Lauren was around 8months old, there has been one product which comes out every year which is her ball pool.

*The product:*

This is a mesh bag which contains 100 hollow plastic balls. The balls are 3 different shades of pink and there are around 20 baby blue balls in there too.

The mesh bag is a dark shade of pink, it is re-useable and has a zip which goes all around the top.

ELC also sell these in a multicoloured pack.

*Price and availability*:

We brought ours nearly 4 years ago, I think at the time they were about £8 a bag but ELC had an offer of 3 for 2 on all outdoor toys. Having just checked online, they are now £10 a bag and the 3 for 2 offer is currently on.

*How to use:*

We put ours in a cheap small padding pool and then Lauren used to sit in there. As she has got older, we have tried to keep them in the pool but they have ventured into the paddling pool (because they are hollow, they float), they have been played with as footballs, another thing she likes to do is just role them down a slide. Lauren also likes to put loads of them on the trampoline when she is on it and make them 'bounce around' when she jumps.

*My opinion*:

These balls are really good quality, unlike cheaper versions on the market, the plastic is quite thick, we have brought others in the past and the slightest touch, and they dent.

The colours are really nice and girly which is what first attracted me to them.

A word of warning though, although there is 100 balls, we needed 3 bags of these to fill the small paddling pool we had.

I also found the balls really useful when teaching Lauren to count, she managed to count to 13 quite quickly (mainly due to counting as we went up the stairs) but anything past that, we struggled, I used to count them with her as we put them away or put them in different places.

I would recommend this product, we have had hours and despite the balls being 4 years old, they are still in excellent condition.

For me, I would give 5 out of 5 stars!

Review may also be on other sites under the same username.

Thanks for reading.