Junior Explorers Subscription Box Review – February 2015

Junior Explorers is a subscription service aimed at children ages 5-12 that teaches them about global ecosystems through monthly “missions.” A portion of the proceeds from this subscription goes toward Mission Give Back, a program to support front line conservation projects around the world!

This box was sent to us for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).

The Subscription: Junior Explorers

The Cost: $19 per month + $2 shipping to continental US, or $5 shipping to Alaska or Hawaii (discounted rates for longer subscription lengths)

The Products: Online and offline activities, games, information, and collectibles to encourage children to explore different ecosystems around the world

Ships to: US only

Every month, your child receives a package from Junior Explorers filled with information and activities to help them complete a “mission.” This month’s mission takes place in the Arctic!

Our mission this month was to help reunite some lost polar bear cubs with their mother. This fact sheet was included to help us prepare for our mission.

Also included were these animal fact cards, so that we could familiarize ourselves with polar bears and other types of animals we might encounter in the Arctic. My seven-year-old found these really interesting!

My kids are really, really into temporary tattoos at the moment, so the ones Junior Explorers included this month (left) were an instant hit! They also included stickers (right)! Fun!

These are postcards of arctic landscapes and animals, and we think they’re beautiful! I’ve been encouraging my sons to send snail mail to relatives lately, so these will definitely come in handy!

All Junior Explorers get a wrist band, a mission pin, and a mini figure of an animal for every mission! I think we also had a beluga whale in addition to our polar bear, but somehow he swam away before we had the chance to photograph him…

Junior Explorers includes an offline activity booklet every month to help familiarize your child with the ecosystem of the current mission. My son finished the maze connecting the polar bear mommy and her cubs, then decided he was done with the mission, so we had to take a little break so he could play with all his new stuff!

Our package also included a checklist so we could make sure that we had absolutely everything we needed to start our online adventure!

We logged in and started our mission, to reunite the polar bear and her cubs. We had to pack a bag with gear and fly to the Arctic Circle. Once there, we met some of the arctic animals along the way, such as this snowy owl!

Along with using maps and compasses, we had a few fun games to play along the way, too. In this game, we had to line up organisms according to their place in the food chain.

After about 20 minutes, we finally found the mother bear! (Spoiler: she was stranded on an ice floe.)

Once we completed the mission, we were presented with this sweet certificate that we filled in!

My son was also awarded 100 points that he could use to support either or both of two charities that support the arctic ecosystem. The charities were the World Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy. We both agreed that this is a super cool feature of Junior Explorers!

Verdict: The bad news is that I could not get the online portion of the mission to work on either my iPad or my Galaxy. We wound up doing the mission on my laptop, but I couldn’t get the mission to work in Internet Explorer, either! We had to use Chrome to get it working. The great news is that Junior Explorers is a lot of fun stuff in a small package! If your children are interested at all in nature or animals, this would be a great subscription for them. One thing I really like is that concepts and facts that are introduced are then reinforced throughout the mission, so they are more likely to stick! I also of course love that a portion of the proceeds goes to environmental charities. I think it’s so important to teach children about good stewardship of our planet!

What do you think of Junior Explorers?