Wonderboards

Our local museum has got this great room for kids, full of drawers they can open, peepholes to look through, and tunnels they can use to climb under the exhibits. As you can imagine, I take my daughter there a lot. One of her very favourite parts is a simple metal panel, bolted to some banisters, with some magnetic dress-up dolls on it. It keeps her entertained for ages. OK, so I have to prise a magnetic handbag or shoes out of her tiny fist each time we leave the room, but that's a small price to pay.

As she loves it so much, I thought that this year we'd set up something similar in her room. Yes, we've got magnets on the fridge door, but that's right next to the cooker and not really a great place to play. So we're buying a big metal notice-board for her room, which we'll hang at toddler height. And the next question was, which magnets to buy.

There are few dilemmas that can't be solved by Google. Filter out all the Barbie results, and the next most popular dressing-up dolls come from Dowling Magnets, home of the Wonderboard. They do a lovely doll with clothes set, and the castle above, which I have to admit I rather covet for myself. Well, I suppose I'm going to be playing with this too, so I might as well enjoy it.

I'm quite prepared to hear from you that Wonderboards have been around for ages, but they're news to me. As the site says, they make a great travel activity, and once I saw that the range also includes monsters, flowers, bugs and cars, I had my entire Christmas list sorted out for the younger half of the extended family.

Available from Kidicraft, and other suppliers, in the UK.