VAMANOS! IMAGINARY PLAY WITH DORA THE EXPLORER

Sharing is caring!

After much excitement at discovering our time-pressured invitation from #CollectiveBias via email this morning, we hit our Amazon fast and scrolled through the various Dora toys on offer.  Our mission?  To shop for Dora the Explorer toys!  At the moment Baby Dragon is on a Dora-high and asks anyone who crosses his path to read Dora’s Bedtime Wishes just one more time for him.  Anyhow, we began scrolling….there were plenty of Dora electronic games on offer, but for two little boys who are delighted to be outside at last after the wet Winter, there was only one choice…and we made it twice.

Dora’s notorious Backpack.

The Shop…

Two plush Backpacks were swiftly clicked into our basket and snapped up by our household. Thanks to our Amazon Prime membership, we had a two hour window to order for next day delivery.

Shopping on Amazon is brilliant. We rely on them for most of our Christmas gifts for two reasons; firstly, with our Prime membership we can guarantee gifts the following day, and secondly there are honest reviews of products from customers.

The plush backpack was awarded 5 stars overall, and although we did consider the plastic backpack instead, the idea of two that I could wash after muddy aventuras and escapades was much more appealing.

A few clicks as to where to deliver and which method of payment to use and the whole ordering process took just under two minutes.  When there are two little ones who want to get started baking sheepy cupcakes, and a husky who wants to snaffle your treasured nutella-covered toast given the slightest opportunity, things need to happen fast and with the minimum required concentration in our house.  Delightfully, minutes later our confirmation email arrived stating that the delivery estimate was 4th March, and I closed the laptop, all done, until my email chimed later in the afternoon to tell me that my package had been dispatched.  No delays, no let downs, just simplicity and certainty.

The DPD delivery driver arrived and handed my frazzled-looking, nearly third trimester belly a package.  Amazon, in our experience, are famous for their huge packaging which some people may not appreciate, but in a household where the cardboard box is King, we love our Amazon deliveries.  Nothing is ever wasted.

The Show…

We love Dora.  We love her cousin Diego too, but Dora captured our hearts first.  If you’ve never seen the show on Nickelodeon, Dora Marquez is a Latina girl with a monkey called Boots as a best friend.  They spend their time helping people through a calamity, which is generally retrieving something precious for someone by overcoming obstacles and solving puzzles as they follow the map to their destination, whilst trying to avoid Swiper the Fox stealing the goods along the way.

I’ve no idea why the boys enjoy watching her so much, but I enjoy the programme because Dora is bilingual.  She flits between Spanish and American English, and my boys imitate that.  Jensen loves to repeat the words under his breath until he’s happy enough to use them with his baby brother.  Also, Dora’s friend, The Map, appeals to the geography teacher hat I wear.  It’s not a GPS, it’s a lovely, landmark dotted map that leads the friends’ missions every time.  No technology there.  Just brainwork. I’m also pretty fond of her “We did it!” song at the end of the episode.

The Shenanigans…

So, the backpacks arrived within the one hour slot as directed by the dispatch email (which we love)  and as we’ve been couped up with cabin fever for most of the past few months, I Dora decided to send the boys on a quest of their very own…

The boys came downstairs for breakfast to be greeted by the Backpacks…and a mission from Dora.

It was bad news.  Devastating.  To cut to the chase, Dora needed to take cookies to her poorly Grandma, and whilst she was gone she asked Jensen and Lyoto to keep a watch on Swiper the Fox.

Everything was fine and quiet, until this morning.  Dadda called from work to say that his lunch was missing!  Swiper the Fox had snatched it, and as Dora had to go to her Grandma’s it was down to us.  We had to get to Dadda’s workplace and track it down before Dadda got too hungry.

After drawing a map (The Map) after breakfast, we headed off to meet Dadda in the car park, and get started on our quest!

First we needed to find the biggest tree.  This was where  Swiper had hidden Dadda’s banana.  They searched high and low until up high in the branches were his two bananas!  They were stashed in the backpacks and we headed off to find the crackers, in a log pile.

But we were too late.  That sneaky fox had been there first.

The loss was tragic to them.  How had it happened?

As Dadda’s lunchtime came to an end, and with our mission completed, we headed back to the car, and home, feeling more than slightly defeated and deflated after the sandwich incident…

…until some of Dora’s cookies were discovered in their new playhouse, with a note from Boots saying how well they’d done.

“I think there will be more missions”, Jensen told me as he munched his cookie, “Hundreds more.”