SpaceMail Pal is a postcard subscription for kids ages 4-11 featuring fun facts about space. The cards are written by a PBS Kids scriptwriter and designed to be educational, collectible, and conversational.
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
This is a review of the $8.99/month plan, which includes 4 postcards per month. Normally these postcards would be sent out weekly to your child, but we received all 4 at once for review purposes.
The Subscription Box: SpaceMail Pal
The Cost: You can choose to receive 1, 2, or 4 postcards each month. Pricing starts at $2.99/month for one postcard, $5.49/month for two postcards, and $8.99/month for four postcards.
The Products: Postcards for kids featuring fun facts about space
Ships to: U.S. only
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This is our fifth month reviewing SpaceMail Pal. These postcards are all about various outer space objects as you might expect. They really run the gamut from familiar topics like our Sun and neighboring planets, to really interesting objects that you might not know of unless you're a frequent stargazer.
SpaceMail Pal sends 1 postcard at a time; you can select to have 1, 2, or 4 postcards delivered each month. The postcards are sent through the mail just like a regular postcard, so there will be postal artifacts on them, including those cool space exploration stamps!
Each card has a photo or illustration of a topic on the front, and then a letter from Astronaut Neil and Robot Sally on the back.
Our first card this month is about Ganymede, which is Jupiter's largest moon. We learned that it's actually the biggest moon in the solar system and is only slightly smaller than Mars! It also has a giant saltwater ocean.
One thing with getting these postcards in the mail instead of in an outer package is that the cards are sometimes a bit obscured; we had to peel off the sticker on the bottom right to read Robot Sally's fact about an initiative by the European Space Agency to launch in 2022 and arrive on Ganymede in 2030!
Our next card is about Saturn, the 7th planet in our solar system.
One of the things I really like about this subscription is that they really try to make size and distance comparisons more accessible to kids. I think this helps to foster a sense of wonder about the greater world by putting things in terms that kids can grasp. Saturn is as large as nine Earths lined up end to end!
Ah, Alpha Centauri! I feel like this intergalactic landmark is the setting for many science fiction novels of my youth, but I didn't really know that much about it.
This three star system looks like a single star from Earth and is the third brightest object in our night sky. This card seemed a little more advanced to me, but they do include basic definitions for terms like "tidally locked" and "habitable zone."
Our last card is for one of those objects I've never heard of before: the Himiko Cloud.
Described as "a glowing primordial blob," this cloud was apparently formed when the universe was only 800 million years old. It's also huge, covering the radius of our own milky way in scale. I'll admit that after reading this card a few times, I'm still a little unsure exactly what this cloud is, though.
Verdict: SpaceMail Pal is an affordable educational subscription for kids! Even though my son is a little young for this on his own, I enjoy reading them with him every month, and I know that I'd have *loved* this myself as a kid.
Parents should note that while this subscription is super affordable, it does not include any discussion guide or additional material, and there's not a consistent "theme" month to month... you'll be jumping around to a lot of different parts of the universe! It would be really fun to organize your cards each month in a postcard box or maybe even a space travel journal so that kids can come back and explore more over time.
What do you think of SpaceMail Pal? Do you have any aspiring astronauts in your life who would enjoy this subscription?
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