"How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top."

Miss T adores Aquabeads. Ever since her godmother gave her a playset for her birthday last year, she's been totally hooked on these little colourful beads that magically stick together with a spray of water. 

 So you can imagine her excitement and delight when Aquabeads sent her the Finding Dory Aquabeads Playset to review.

The set came with a bead palette to store the beads, a design table (which also doubles up as a clip on cover to keep the beads safe when not in use), a layout tray where the beads are placed onto, 3 template sheets which help you form the Dory / Nemo themed designs, a sprayer for squirting the water on and a bead pen.

 One of the things we've noticed about Aquabeads is that they seem to be continually looking at little ways to innovate and improve. For example, of the 3 sets that we own, each of the design tables clip onto the bead palette in a slightly different way. Indicating that Aquabeads are always improving on the design.

 Similarly the bead pen that was included in this set is different to the other bead pen that we have. This one can store several beads in it whereas the previous one is for picking up and placing one bead at a time.

Miss T did actually find the previous style bead pen easier to use but that may change with practice.

 Now here's the interesting thing that happened with Miss T. She loves Aquabeads. She often asks to get her Aquabeads playsets out. So she started working on a Marlin and Nemo design straight away.

Then she took a break from it for a few days. Then she decided she didn't want to carry on with it so we packed it all away.

The following day, she wanted to play with the Aquabeads playset again. She once again chose the Nemo design to work on. She concentrated hard and put the beads in place. Then took a break. The following day, she did some more.

 She loves the satisfaction of finding the right colour beads, choosing which beads to use next and getting them in the right places.

Then she took another break. This time after asking her if she wanted to carry on, she said she wanted to pack it away for now. So the beads were put back in the tray and I have no doubt she will again get them out next time she wants to play Aquabeads.

Now the dilemma I faced and had to bite my lip about was that grown-ups often only value things that are finished, complete, finalised.

So as much as I wanted to just place the final few beads on and spray it with water so that it was 'done', I had to resist that urge and respect the fact that Miss T is getting a huge amount of enjoyment from the process rather than feeling the need to get an end product out of it.

As I write this blogpost, I don't have a finished Marlin to show you, nor a Nemo or a Dory or Hank the Octopus. But I don't mind and I hope you don't too because Miss T has enjoyed the Finding Dory Aquabeads playset regardless and I'm sure she will continue to do so.

You can buy the Aquabeads Finding Dory Playset from Amazon and other good toy retailers.

We are delighted to be official Aquabeaders!

Disclosure: As official Aquabeaders, we were sent the Finding Dory Playset for the purposes of review. All opinions are our own. This post contains an Affiliate link which means that at no cost to you, I may receive a small payment if you buy something from a site I link to. I only recommend and link to products, services and companies that I am happy to promote.

*Quote by Yvon Chouinard