If I'm perfectly honest, I've never been a massive fan of colouring books. Why limit a child's creativity by giving them something to colour when they could have the freedom to draw something of their own? I think having two boys who were never particularly into colouring and could never sit still for long made me think that kids just didn't want to sit still for hours on end to colour a picture.
But when Miss T came along, we noticed from a very early age that she loved to grab hold of a pen and do 'writing' and 'drawing' - Most children start their mark making on a large scale but Miss T liked to make tiny little marks and circles that from a distance actually did resemble writing.
Whereas at this age (she's now 4) the boys had shown very little interest in colouring, Miss T really does enjoy colouring books and colouring sheets. But I knew she was too young to fully appreciate the detail needed in the Where's Wally? colouring book.
D has always been creative, with his flair for cooking, his talent with music and his love of art. He's now 10 so I felt this would be a great activity for him. BUT instead of giving him the Where's Wally Colouring book to review as I normally would for book reviews, I actually introduced it as MY book.
I've been learning about the Incredible Years research in recent months and one of the foundation stones is built on spending time playing with your child. So I knew immediately this colouring book could become a focus for our 'play' - for some quality one to one time spent with D.
This colouring book is so detailed and has so much to do that it reminds me of those colouring books aimed at grown-ups. I actually think it would make a fab grown-up's colouring book as it's so engaging and therapeutic just to spend sometime thinking of nothing else but colouring in. With no wrong or right, just totally absorbed in one activity.
This book has LOADS of detailed mainly double paged spreads to colour in. There are various themes to the pages, like a dinosaur themed picture, a seaside theme, a bandstand theme and so on. Some of the pages already have a small splash of colour, whilst others are completely black and white.
A few of the pages are slightly less detailed making them potentially easier to colour in.
We even dared let young Miss T loose on one of the pages - that's the great thing about this book - it really can be enjoyed by all the family and provides literally hours and hours of fun.
Do you know what - we had so much fun with the colouring part that we almost forgot to actually look for Wally!!! Of course he is there, hiding in every picture but it is even more tricky to find him in black and white.
And as if this wasn't packed with enough fun to last for hours, there are even checklists at the back of the book to find specific things in each picture.
As I had decided to keep the colouring book as my own, I've decided to give J and D one of the Where's Wally activity books each. There's the Where's Wally? Across Lands Activity Book which I think D will enjoy as it covers some topics and themes that he's been learning about at school and the Where's Wally? In Outer Space Activity Book which will be a great one for J. Again he did a space topic at school a while ago and really got into it so I know he'd enjoy this.
We've got some long journeys coming up in the summer holidays so I've hidden these from them until then. They'll also be great for rainy day fun if we end up stuck indoors due to the great british weather this summer.
Of course I had a sneak peak myself first...each of the activity book has a page of stickers at the back and the books are packed with puzzles, mazes, and matching games.
These books are available from Amazon as follows - as always please double-check current prices when purchasing:
Where's Wally? Across Lands Activity Book Priced at £5.99
Where's Wally? In Outer Space Activity Book Priced at £5.99
Where's Wally? The Colouring Book Priced at £5.00
Disclosure: We were sent these books for the purpose of review. All opinions are our own.
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