NCT Sale haul and the music box.

For those of you not lucky enough to live where there's an NCT sale it's a twice yearly second hand sale where you can get some great bargains and sell all the stuff you don't use any longer. This was my first one where I was selling stuff and I was pleased that all the big bits went but had to bring most of the clothes home as they just weren't selling - I think ebay and supermarkets make second hand clothes seem expensive. 

The only problem with all the bargains is it can be tempting to pick up anything you think *might* be nice and so you end up going home with more stuff than you cleared out. I was reasonably restrained this time though (although no thanks to Cara who kept forcing me to buy more things!). I got a bargain Muddy Puddles suit as Isaac's outgrown the Togz one we had.  I also bought a load of books now we're progressing onto the next stage of reading - my favourite so far is Silly Suzy Goose.

My shopping list for the sale included wooden cars (I've seen most of them in a set from ELC costing £15 - I paid £2 for the partial set),

 

wooden blocks (£1 for a cloth bag full),

and also a large duplo base board, which I got for £2 (I've seen them go for over £6 on ebay so this is a great bargain). I missed out on some other Duplo bits but it's apparently not the done thing to wrestle to get what you want... 

I always keep an eye out for musical instruments. There were lots of cheap keyboards but as we have a proper electric piano I'd rather Isaac played with that at the moment. There were quite a few bits of percussion instruments though so I picked up some more bits for the music box. 

The bells are the best thing out of the two mixed bags - although the drum is quite fun even if it sounds better when hit on its base!

The music box may have to have a thinning soon as we can't fit everything in...

These are our favourite bits. 

The sandpaper blocks are proper percussion ones and Isaac loves them (although one of the handles fell off today so I need to get the glue out).

The wooden drum is one Granny and Grandpa bought from John Lewis - it has a lovely tone but needs to be hit with a rubber tipped stick.

The two sets of bells were both second hand.

The recorder was from Poundland - it's not great but Isaac has fun blowing it and can learn that covering the holes makes different tones. 

The square toy is a lift the flap toy from ELC which has different music at each stage - it's a noisy toy that neither of us hate and so should win awards on those grounds alone.

There's a wooden guiro which has a throaty frog sound when stroked with the stick or a high tone when hit. It's one of my favourite toys as it feels really nice in your hand as well as sounding good. 

Then there's a proper mouth organ. It was cheap but is a great toddler toy as it's easy to make a noise - much better in fact than many of the toddler toys that cost a fortune.

And finally there's the Triola - Isaac can work it ok but it's always funny to see adults trying it out for the first time as you have to hold a key down to get any noise and it takes a little while for this to be realised...

I should also have done a picture of the things not to buy... top of the list would be the ELC slide whistle.