School is officially out! We have hot weather on the way according to the forecast and the kids are running wild.
Our two have a four year age gap and are girl versus boy so sometimes we can struggle to entertain them together, however the biggest hit of the Summer so far is the slip and slide.
We bought it last year from Amazon. It was pretty inexpensive and we packed it away carefully after the Summer was over. This year it’s made a reappearance, but now that our little boy is a year older, what a difference! So far they have spent hours on it. Even if it isn’t that hot.
We don’t have much of a slope in the garden but with a bit of water and some bubbles or baby oil they can easily slide and end up in fits of giggles.
One thing that has made it much easier to use is placing gym mats underneath. This avoids any bumps and makes it smoother and faster. Our lawn is definitely not the pristine variety. The mats we have are gymnastic crash mats that you can buy on eBay or Amazon. We shopped around a bit. They were great for when the kids were crawling and we’ve used them ever since for larking about on. I am sure we will use them for many years to come as my daughter has just joined a gymnastics class.
We can connect the slip and slide to the hose and create a fountain of water down the sides and at the bottom, which is what it is meant to do, although not quite as impressively as the pictures on the box of course.
It creates a pool of water at the very end that makes a very satisfying splash. To lessen the amount of water we were getting through I reduced the hose to a trickle and just placed it at the top of the slide and this works well too. In fact sometimes our youngest gets a bit sensitive about being sprayed with cold hose pipe water so this was the preferred option. I’m with him on that one!
We have a few inflatables that the kids stick at the bottom and crash into or ride down on. To be honest I just let them play. I read a tonne of reviews when I bought our water slide. I didn’t want to spend a fortune and went for a Banzai 16 foot slide (4.8 metres). It was around twenty quid. Of course it doesn’t look like it does on the box and the little sprays of water go all over the place and certainly not in an impressive ‘tunnel of water’ as advertised. The thing is though, the kids still love it and have a great time with it.
I really love the fact that they are too young to have any preconceived ideas and they don’t seem to get disappointed in the same way that adult consumers do. Kids just play. They checked out this funny new gizmo, assessed it’s potential and then played and played and played. I’ld like to take a leaf out of their book.
Wellies by the Door 