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EORGE AND EMILY were driving each other mad. It had been raining for days and they were bored.

They fought over their toys, over their sweets, over the TV, over the computer.They were driving their mum mad, too. In the end she pushed them out of the house. ‘Out, you two! Go and burn off some energy! The sun’s coming out, so you can play in the garden.’‘Let’s play with the Road Paddling Pool!’ said George.‘No! Let’s play with the gardening set!’ said Emily.They were already starting to fight again. Luckily, Mum heard them through the kitchen window and quickly sorted things out. ‘If you can’t play nicely together, you’ll have to play on your own. George you play with the pool. Emily – here’s the gardening set. Now I don’t want to hear any more squabbling!’George cleaned the leaves out of the pool with the garden hose. He hardly soaked himself at all! Then he filled up the pool until it was deep enough for his inflatable car to float in. He started driving the car along the roads in the pool, stopping and starting at the traffic lights and steering around the red and white cone.Meanwhile, Emily took the blue plant pot from the gardening set. Then she took the trowel and dug some soil from the garden. First she placed some little stones in the bottom of the plant pot so that the water could drain out. Then she carefully poured in the soil and pressed it down with the back of the trowel until it was firm. Then she opened the packet of sunflower seeds her Dad had given her and began to plant them, making little holes in the soil with her finger and dropping one seed into each.

Story created by the award winning children’s author Andy Blackford Brought to you by Chad Valley Toys

XPERTS HAVE PROVEN that just 15 minutes open play every day can make

an enormous difference to the development of your child. It sparks originality and curiosity.

Play lights up children’s imagination.

Enjoy your story together. It’s time to play.

EE

The bestgardeningset ever

The bestgardeningset ever

GG

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In the picture on the front of the packet, the yellow flowers looked enormous.When she’d finished, she sat back and stared hard at the plant pot, as if the sunflowers were about to come popping out, right then and there!They didn’t, of course, and after a while she began to feel bored. She wandered off to the garden shed to find something else to do. She didn’t have to look very far – there was the children’s very own lawnmower, the one that blew bubbles when you pushed it along! She hadn’t played with it for ages. She dragged it out of the shed and started to push it across onto the lawn.Now it just so happened that at that very moment, George decided that driving his inflatable car would be even more exciting if there were some dinosaurs wandering across the road. Maybe they’d escaped from the zoo? After all, a proper zoo really ought to have dinosaurs. And because dinosaurs were so big and strong, perhaps they’d broken out of their cages and run away into the town? ‘I bet that’s why real zoos don’t have dinosaurs,’ decided George. ‘It’s because they’ve all escaped!’He ran indoors to his bedroom and after digging around in his toy box, returned to the garden with his dinosaur bucket. It contained lots and lots of dinosaurs – 50, in fact. Easily enough to cause a really good traffic jam in his pool!But as he ran across the lawn, Emily was walking the other way, pushing the bubble lawnmower. A huge cloud of bubbles drifted across the garden in the breeze ‘Look out, George!’ called Emily.‘What did you say?’ said George.‘I said, LOOK OUT!’

‘What?’ George shouted crossly. ‘Leave me alone, Emily, can’t you see I’m busy?’Then he ran straight into the bubble cloud. He couldn’t see a thing. He turned this way, then that way – then he fell straight into his pool with a huge splash! ‘ARRGH!’ he yelled. ‘Now look what you’ve done! I’m completely soaked! I’m going to tell Mummy of you!’George was sitting in the pool with a stegosaurus perched on top of his head. Emily tried not to laugh, but she failed. Between giggles she told him, ‘I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. Anyway, if you want to be a snitchy tell-tale, go ahead!’ And she flounced off into the house.George soon stopped feeling angry. The sun was shining and it was quite warm. ‘My shorts will soon dry in this,’ he thought. He took off his T-shirt and hung it over a deckchair. In the corner of his road layout was another little pool that he’d filled up with the 100 balls that Mum and Dad had given him for Christmas. Now he buried some of the runaway dinosaurs under the balls and pretended they were hiding from the police!

MILY HAD gone up to her room to fetch her bright orange hopper. She’d already forgotten about George

and the pool and was happily bouncing around the garden – Boing! Boing! Boing!George pretended that the dinosaurs were bursting out of the ball pool to get away from the zookeepers who were chasing them. All Emily saw were lots of brightly-coloured balls, rolling and bouncing across the lawn towards her! Before she could jump off her hopper, they’d rolled right underneath it. ‘Help!’ she cried as the hopper skidded madly this way and that on the wet grass.

EE

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It was true, the stalk was as thick as a fence post and the flower was bigger than a dustbin lid. It was waving in the air above the chimneys of their cottage.‘I don’t understand!’ whispered Emily.‘Ahem!’ said a little voice from behind them. ‘I rather think it’s my fault!’They turned to see Monty the garden gnome. He was clutching his pointy red hat in his hands and he looked very embarrassed. ‘Hello, Monty!’ said George. ‘So why is it your fault?’‘I wanted to do something nice for you both, because you were so kind to me when that dreadful great dinosaur painted me to look like a clown. So I put some fairy dust in your plant pot, Emily!’‘Fairy dust?’ said Emily, amazed.‘It was only supposed to make the flowers come up a bit more quickly – but I think I might have overdone it a bit!’‘I think you must have!’ laughed George, pointing at the sunflower which was now so big and so high, it really did look like an extra sun up in the sky.‘Never mind, Monty,’ said Emily. ‘It’s the best sunflower I’ve ever seen – and the best present you could possibly have given us.’ George agreed – then he frowned. ‘How are we going to explain this to Mum and Dad?’‘Don’t worry,’ laughed Emily. ‘We’ll just say thank you for giving us the best gardening set in the world!’

She hung on as long as she could, then fell off – straight into the road pool!George laughed so much, he slipped on the grass and landed in the pool again with a huge splash, next to his sister.‘That was really mean of you, George!’ spluttered Emily. ‘Look at me, I’m SOAKED! I’m going to tell Mummy of you!’‘Haha!’ laughed George. ‘Well, if you want to be a snitchy tell-tale, go ahead…’ Then Emily laughed too – and she grabbed the sprayer from the pool and started spraying George. ‘I don’t care!’ George shouted. ‘You can’t make me any wetter than I am already.’ And then he froze. ‘What?’ said Emily.George’s eyes were as big as saucers as he pointed a shaky finger. ‘L-look!’ he whispered. Emily followed to where he was pointing and her mouth fell open. ‘Oh, WOW!’ she gasped. She might well have gasped, because out of the pretty blue plant pot from the gardening set was growing an absolutely enormous yellow sunflower! It was already taller than she was and the flower was as big as a dinner plate. What’s more, it was growing so quickly, she could actually see it moving!‘What’s THAT?’ cried George. ‘It’s just…a…sunflower…’ murmured Emily. She was in a daze.‘Look, it’s almost as tall as the house, now!’ said George.