They always say that one of the biggest tests when reviewing something is asking the question "would I have bought this myself?" and that's a very easy question for me to answer here as we actually bought Little Miss C the Road and Rail Overhead Platform for her birthday earlier this year! That means we've actually had a good few months to review this properly and it's quite telling that when LMC saw it in the latest Play Patrol package from Bigjigs her response was "oh wow, another platform".
Our train set building has had to slow down a bit lately as it's not compatible with a crawling Master C who just wants to destroy everything. Instead LMC and I reserve "playing trains" for when he is napping and then we really go to town with it!
The fact that last weekend we cleared out our spare bedroom for my sister and her husband to stay means that we're blessed with a lot of clear floor space this week which is perfect for setting out large scenes.
I've blogged before about the whole Bigjigs Road and Rail range and now, three months later, we're still just as much in love with it as we were then. LMC loves acting out scenes with it and most recently she seems to love acting out the train being used to take everyone to school. A fine example of how children use play to act out real like situations which may be new to them in some way.
She also seems to have a strange fascination with acting out car and train crashes. I think a recently watched episode of Thomas the Tank engine may be responsible for that!
Such was the shock and disbelief at a train arriving at a platform on time in the UK that the Bigjigs police had to be called!
Back to the piece that we're actually reviewing – the Road and Rail Overhead Platform. As the name suggests this is a raised train platform which goes over a piece of road. It's great as a link piece between the road and rail sets and the concept of a platform is a great addition for children to act out stories with. There's also something that children love about trains going up and down slopes and having a "tunnel" to push things through.
Rather than keep a second platform I actually gave the one we were sent to review to Little Miss C's new pre-school classroom. I'd noticed that they had a wooden train set and thought it would make a nice addition for all the children there to enjoy. Talking to the class Teaching Assistant it seems that it's already a well loved addition to their train set and I have to admit that it gives me a bit of a warm and fluffy feeling that LMC and I are managing to share some of the Bigjigs magic with LMC's school friends.
Disclaimer: As a Bigjigs Play Patrol member we were sent a Road and Rail Overhead Platform for the purposes of this review. As mentioned above we had already bought one of these so donated this one to LMC's pre-school.
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