Pocket money spending at The Toadstool

I have written a post previously about helping kids learn the importance of money and budgeting, so when J was given a budget to spend at The Toadstool, it was a chance for him to put into practice some of the trade-offs involved and decisions to be made when spending pocket money.

As you may remember, J was asked by The Toadstool, a lovely online toyshop, to send over some of his favourite jokes which they then match up to some of their toys and share on facebook regularly. J has had great fun doing this and his younger brother has also helped out too. They don't manage to find jokes for every topic so The Toadstool have been filling in the gaps, but they have had fun doing the best they can.

So as a thank you for all his hard work, J was given a budget of £30 from The Toadstool to spend on anything he liked from their website.

As you can imagine, he was delighted. He immediately decided that he wanted to share his budget with D as he had also helped out with some of the jokes. I told them that if they wanted to they could buy a joint item to share up to £30 or they could split it and buy a separate item each.

I did also forewarn them that if they didn't find anything suitable for their age group (The Toadstool caters perfectly for children aged 0-7 and the boys are just beyond this now), that they could choose something for 1 year old T instead as they would still get the benefit of playing with her.

They set to work looking around The Toadstool. If you register with The Toadstool you can set up a wishlist to add your favourite items to and then you can narrow down your choice after that as you place things into your basket ready for checkout.

As they are both very confident using technology, I largely left them to it as they were able to navigate around the site themselves. There is the ability to look for toys by age group, and also to look for pocket money toys under £5 and under £10. Alternatively you can look at the toys by category such as 'wooden toys', 'soft toys' etc.

The Toadstool prides itself on stocking high quality educational and fun toys that are ethically sourced. The other HUGE plus is free delivery on orders in the UK.

Very soon, the boys found the section called 'cuddle' under the soft toys tab. J quickly set his heart on this cute Maud n Lil organic cubby bear. D loved the look of the Sorgenfresser 'worry eating' cuddly toys. He really wanted the Sorgenfresser Biff doll but at £25 he knew that it would take them way over the budget once added to J's choice of bear at £19.50.

Thankfully, he spotted a Sorgenfresser Mini Biff for only £12.50. This would take them to a grand total of £32. They had worked out themselves that this was over budget but they had become so attached to their decisions that they came up with a solution themselves by offering to pay £1 extra each from their money boxes to cover the £2 shortfall.

As they had been told at the outset that it was their own choice of toy to choose from The Toadstool, I agreed to their choices and to their idea of them making up the shortfall. Interestingly it most definitely isn't what I would have chosen.

Whilst these toys do look lovely, I find that our house is already massively overrun with cuddly toys and so they are always last on my list. However, both of the boys seem to have a real affection for cuddly toys and will happily choose them over any other toy!

Whilst most of their peers seem to have moved on to other current fads and famous plastic toy characters, my sons simply adore spending time with their much loved cuddly toys. So I'm pretty sure that Cubby Bear and Mini Biff will become treasured additional members of the family.

Disclaimer: The Toadstool have very kindly provided a budget of £30 to be spent on toy/s of our choice from their website. All opinions are our own and are our own honest opinions.