REVIEW – Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse

We have been loving the Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse over the summer.

At four years old, Erin absolutely loves spending time in our garden. Over recent months, I have made a real effort to teach Erin about the environment and nature, including telling her about seeds and how things grow, planting and growing our own vegetables and explaining about the role of sunshine and water.

As well as being educational, Erin finds this super fun, and over the last few months we have played together whilst growing green beans and tomatoes in the process.

I was recently given the opportunity to review the award winning Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse – the perfect play house for mini eco friendly fanatics!

About the Product

The Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse is an innovative, educational outdoor playhouse, filled with Earth-friendly features and activities for kids to learn about recycling, solar power, gardening, and much much more!

The Playhouse features include: 

• Recycling centre with removable bins – great for teaching about separating paper and plastics to be recycled.
• Water reservoir leading to a rain barrel – collecting rainfall which can be reused elsewhere in the garden.
• Letter box
• Solar powered light and Skylight
• Dutch door and doorbell with sound
• Small roof section can be filled with soil to grow grass (like a green roof)
• Planting box where children can grow flowers and vegetables
• Real working sink, water comes from rain barrel
• Accessories include:
  * 1-Shovel
  * 1-Hand “rake”
  * 1-Play phone
  * 1-Watering can

Our Experience

Erin was super excited when the large box arrived from the courier, and was desperate to see what was inside.

I stupidly decided to open it to take a look, which in hindsight would have been better done when Erin wasn’t around, as she immediately wanted to pull out pieces and play with them, and got a little impatient wanting to open lots of the little bags contained inside. The assembly of this play house is not a quick and easy task, and as such,, my advice would be to wait until the kids are in bed before you attempt it. Luckily for me, I have two very handy men in my life, my partner and my father, the latter of whom very kindly offered to come and help put it together.

By help, I of course mean do it completely unassisted, other than me continuously dragging Erin out of the half assembled house whilst he tried to work around her, and of course making him a drink – I am not a complete slave driver after all.

The construction of the house probably took about an hour all in,  as there are quite a few pieces to screw into place. My Dad advised that the instructions were very easy to follow, and that the pieces were clearly marked in diagrammatic form so that it was fairly straightforward to figure out which pieces went where.

The most fiddly part of the entire build was slotting the garden tray into the base of the house, but this was mainly because some of the edges of the house itself had warped slightly in the box, and as such the wall of the house wasn’t as straight as it could have been. We have had the house up a couple of weeks now, and the wall hasn’t gone back as straight as I would have aniticipated, however this doesn’t detract from the overall look and feel of the playhouse.

Erin has absolutely loved playing in her house, and here are just a few of the adventures we have had over the last month.

Recycling

Using the two different recycling bins included in the playhouse, I have been teaching Erin about the kinds of items we can recycle, and which ones need to go in the regular waste bin. Erin has enjoyed sorting pieces of cardboard and bottles, and popping them in the right bins using the pictures to guide her!

Planting Flowers:

The Playhouse comes with its very own garden tray, perfect for popping in some soil and growing some flowers. Whilst we could have planted some seeds, we bought some flowers from our local garden centre, and Erin helped me plant these herself using her very own trowel and watering can. Once planted, Erin used the water butt to fill her watering can with rain water and gave the flowers a much needed feed.

Sewing grass seed on the roof and watching it grow

This was probably Erin’s favourite ‘task’ with the Go Green Playhouse so far. Grandad came round with a big bag of grass seed, and helped Erin plant it in the living roof tray. We taught Erin how important it was to make sure the seeds got lots of water, so every day after preschool or nannies, she ventures out with her little watering can and stands on a step to reach it.

The grass grew really quickly and Erin was fascinated to see how quickly the entire tray turned green!

Watering the Garden

We have a lot of other plants to water in our garden, particularly on the upper patio, so Erin also took responsibility for this, making sure that our vegetables and potted plants were kept hydrated! The best part was that we didn’t need to get out the hosepipe once. With the amount of rainfall we have had over the last few weeks, the water butt was full of rain water ready for us to reuse. Erin loves opening the little tap to fill up her watering can.

Whats Your Order?

I love how the Go Green Playhouse also allows Erin to use her imagination. The house isn’t just only an Eco Home but a Restaurant too – Erin asks me to post my ‘order’ through the letter box before pretending to make it at the sink. The working sink is fantastic, again pulling water through from the water butt. Erin pretends to cook and wash up, before calling me to the front door to collect my order, or asks me to be the chef as she drives up in her Cozy Coupe (a little like a McDonalds drive through!) – Slightly embrrasing this one, as we have clearly done that a tad too regularly!

Anyone Home?

Who doesn’t love hiding from their baby sister? Erin loves hiding behind the door whilst Neve rings the bell, before scaring her by popping up into sight again! Hours of fun! The door is just the right height for Neve to pull herself up against, so she loves to come and see what her sister is up to, and touch the interactive elements she can reach.

Overall

The Go Green Playhouse has been a HUGE hit with both of the girls, and I know this will be fun for playtime for many years to come, particularly when Neve is old enough to walk and play inside with her sister! It is so much more than a regular four walled playhouse, with educational and interactive elements that really make it stand out from the crowd.

At £250, this is obviously a fairly significant investment, however when compared to other playhouses on the market, I think this is definitely a case of you get what you pay for!

You can learn more about the Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse on the Little Tikes website.

*Disclosure – we were sent the Little Tikes Go Green Playhouse free of charge for the purpose of this review, however as always all thoughts and opinions are my own*.