Little Hands Learning | Dragon Box

 “A monthly subscription box, inspired by the magic of books.”

If you saw my reel on Instagram, you'll know that July's Little Hands Learning Box had a dragon theme inspired by the book: Dragon Post, written and illustrated by Emma Yarlett. The four activities were:

• Design your own stamps
• Build your own flying dragon
• Create a magical dragon home
• Write a letter

We absolutely adored this book, not least because there were five letters to open, which created an interactive element and made the reading fun. The story is pretty funny, too. The illustrations are also bright and vivid, and it really helped spark our imagination. The question that I asked Alfie was what would you do if you found a dragon in your living room? He said he didn’t really know… I think I would panic!

Stick a stamp on it

The first activity Alfie did was to design his stamps ready for adding to his letter. We were given two strips of five, so ten stamps to create. He made me laugh as he unboxed the items and what you don’t hear on the reel is Alfie asking “Is this a tens frame? What do we need to do with it?” – so funny. He happily drew the first five stamps, drawing himself, a football (obvs), a flower, a red crayon, and a chilli.

He then said he had run out of ideas, so I ended up drawing the other five designs and leaving him to colour them. I drew (a very basic) rocket, King, tree, dragon, and ice cream cone. He then wrote his letter/card, deciding to be the dragon as at the end of the story (spoiler alert!), the dragon goes away… hence the dragon post that Alex receives. Alfie usually uses pencil for writing, but I was so impressed with how well he did. He didn’t ask me to spell or sound any of the words out and he went all out with the finger spaces!

Fly my dragon fly

Well, we couldn’t get our dragon to go very far, but we still had fun together – Alfie designing it, and me cutting and sticking it together. I cut the head and tail out first, while Alfie designed his masterpiece – mainly mark making, before moving onto shapes in complementary colours (until we went wild with the peach). I also think I stuck the tail down wrong, but we’ll have to give it another try soon!

It's a small world

The dragon small world was just fantastic. In addition to the dragon figure we received in the box, we had a bag of blue sand and glitter to use as the base. I went outdoors and collected some leaves to make a den (or dragon bed) and created steppingstones from some past-their-best wildflowers that were otherwise destined for the bin.

I usually set these scenes up in shallow paint trays and leave them on the dining table for Alfie to play with when he fancies. He did enjoy playing with it in short bursts, but quickly added more figures to the tray – dinosaurs, of course – before deciding to start throwing the sand all over the table…

I’ve already decided that I’ll be reading Dragon Post again soon, as it’s been a while since we read it, and it’s such a fantastic book. Unfortunately, it’s not currently available from the Little Hands Learning bookstore, but there, you can find a lot of the books from previous boxes. However, the Dragon Box can still be purchased as a one-off box if you’re not looking to subscribe – but you can use my discount code LUCYLOCKET on purchases.

I know I’m behind with these posts, and have another two boxes to review, so keep your eyes peeled for those.

Also, huge apologies for being MIA lately… I’ve had so much content to write, but neither the time of energy to actually commit to this little site and it’s also meant my enjoyment for this hobby was waned slightly. But I’ll be back!

As always, please follow Little Hands Learning on Instagram for sneak peeks on future boxes, fun and educational ideas to do with your children and some fantastic books!

Love, Lucy xx