Did you know it has been 35 years since the children’s classic Dear Zoo was published? Of course I’ve heard of the book but somehow I’ve never actually read it! However, that didn’t stop me being keen for Toby and Gabe to try out some Dear Zoo toys from the lovely Milly & Flynn.

We tried some lovely wooden Peppa Pig toys from Milly & Flynn back in November so I knew before we even got them that these Dear Zoo toys would be great quality too. We were sent a wooden shape sorter, and a lift the flap puzzle for the boys to play with and as you can see Gabe couldn’t wait to get his hands on them!

We’ve got a couple of different shape sorters and Gabe has just recently worked out how to use them. He’s still at the stage though where he has to look at each shape, and sometimes try a few different holes before he finds the right one. What I liked about this Dear Zoo shape sorter was that although there are only four different shapes, you get two blocks for each shape so you don’t have to empty it quite as often.

I wasn’t really expecting Toby to want to play with the shape sorter – at nearly four years old it’s pretty easy for him. But, he loves shapes and building at the moment so he was happy to make up his own game stacking the bricks, and then making different patterns with the shapes.

The blocks also have different colours on the ends so they can be used to help with colour recognition as well as for learning the shapes.

The other thing we were sent from the Dear Zoo range was a lift the flap puzzle. This came in a lovely cardboard carrying case. Each card has an animal from the story hiding under a flap, and they can be put in the right order by matching the colours on each end.

Gabe loves lifting flaps at the moment so he loved looking at the cards, as did Toby.

Toby also enjoyed matching the colours and putting the puzzle together.

I’m not sure that Gabe really got the idea though…

Toby and Gabe really liked their new Dear Zoo toys from Milly & Flynn (in fact they liked them so much they ended up fighting over them because they both wanted to play with the same things!) There are lots of other fab toys in the range too – how cute are these wheeled vehicles?

I think I might actually have to get hold of a copy of the book now too!

Is Dear Zoo a favourite in your house?