The lovely people at Leapfrog have sent Zara and Oscar one of their Peek A Shoe Octopus to review.

The Peek A Shoe Octopus is for ages 9-36 months and so Oscar is almost old enough to play with it now. I have to remember that as he was premature he isn’t quite as advanced as most 8 month olds at the moment but now he has learnt to sit up he will find it easier to play :) Zara at 22 months absolutely loves playing with it.

The Peek A Shoe is basically a ball drop toy, you drop the balls into either the Octopus’s hat or arm (well I suppose technically it’s a tentacle?) and then you have to find which shoe it will appear under. The Octopus gives you clues using colours and numbers to help you find the ball. This is a fab game for teaching colour recognition, numbers and even sea animals. Zara can already identify most of the animals on the shoes but her favourite word is currently Octopus!

I only have a couple of small issues with the Peek A Shoe Octopus. 1) The balls are just small enough to roll under my sofa and so I’m quite frequently lying on my stomach with a ruler trying to get them back and 2) Zara has a habit of dropping other items into the Octopus. So far we have managed to retrieve them all successfully but we have to keep an eye out as we’ve so far found a shoe, a gingerbread man and a load of wooden jigsaw pieces in there. Even taking this into account though I think the Octopus is a great toy and we have been having loads of fun with it. When Oscar is a little older it will be lovely for them both to play with it together :)

The Peek A Shoe Octopus sells for £24.99 which I think is a pretty reasonable price and if you’re looking for gift ideas for a baby/toddler then it is definitely worth considering.