Skylanders SWAP Force is the latest big thing to hit our house and definitely going to feature on the top of many children’s Christmas lists. I know my son definitely wants to add to his SkylandersSWAPForce Character collection this Christmas. We had eagerly awaited the launch and were just thrilled when the big day arrived. My son had waited more than 2 weeks past his birthday for it and was not disappointed. Trouble is, especially being self-employed from home, it is sometimes easy over half-term just to let the kids just play on the computer, enjoying their favourite game. So imagine my delight when I saw on BooRooandTiggerToo that there was a SkylandersSWAPFORCE FREE Halloween Download activity pack. Such perfect timing to get their brains thinking and a bit of time away from the screen. It was also perfect timing for testing out our new STABILO Stationery.
The SkylandersSWAPForce FREE Halloween Download activity pack is a great idea if you want to go to the toilet in peace keep your children entertained at the end of the half term week, or even if you fancy staying in as an alternative Halloween activity. I liked how there were sections to keep even my youngest child (aged 4) entertained – as of course he loves whatever his big brothers are into too.
There are various different activities to do – here is a free hand drawing page, which allows you to swap a Skylander with a Halloween character. Some sections were slightly harder than others and this called in for a bit of team work (mainly the word searches and the unscrambling of the characters names). These were obviously good for logic and thinking – as well as memory.
Then there’s a page explaining how you too could create your own SkylandersSWAPForce dressing up costume for Halloween.
The activity packs are good for fine motor development with all that pencil control – and gave us an opportunity to try out our Stabilo pencils – which help children develop the tripod grip. We were sent some with grips, the STABILO EASYgraph (left and right handed), plus a coloured one (STABILO EASYcolours) a chunky one (The Stabilo Woody – a coloured pencil, watercolour and wax crayon in one), and a triangle shaped one. I have to say myself and my husband are very impressed with the control this range of early writers pencils gave our youngest son – who struggles with his fine motor co-ordination.
I was also surprised to see just how much of a difference the left-handed pencil made too (my youngest especially is undecided which hand is he dominant one yet so tried both! But my 10 year old is definitely left handed like me). I know how much it can help having a good tool – I used to hate trying to use certain scissors, peels etc. The STABILO pencils also came with an early writers sheet that gave lots of information about fine motor, position the children should be sitting in (I never knew that their feet should be able to reach the floor!) and samples of their activity sheets available online.
There are dot to dots which are great for numerical skills, line drawing, co-ordination, identification – and then you can colour them in too – precision skills.
My son was very excited because he just KNEW which character it was going to be, and this made him feel confident and proud – good for self-esteem.
Did you guess right?
We received free STABILO Stationery in order to review their products. The SkylandersSWAPForce activity pack is FREE for all to download was a good way to further demonstrate how good the pencils were, whilst sharing with others our love of SkylandersSWAPForce.