My Pretend Place Craft Subscription Box Review – April 2015

My Pretend Place is a subscription service for children, offering both a quarterly subscription of costumes and theme-related items, and a monthly craft subscription. We recently reviewed the costume subscription, and that one was a lot of fun! This review is of the monthly crafts subscription.

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

The Subscription: My Pretend Place (Crafts)

The Cost: $15 per month, shipping included

The Products: Materials and instructions for two children (ages 3-8) to complete one craft.

Ships to: US only

Ships via: Fed Ex

Instead of a theme card, My Pretend Place tends to send letters from fictional characters to the child, explaining what they are doing and why. This letter is from a birdkeeper at the zoo. It’s a fun way to get children into pretend mode right away!

Our first project is building a bird feeder! All supplies were included for this project except scissors. The instructions are on the left. It’s almost impossible to read them in this picture, but so far we have found the instructions to be pretty easy to follow.

I started this project with my seven-year-old, but he got bored and wandered off. Have you ever tried painting 72 large craft sticks with a tiny paintbrush and tempera paint? It takes a long, long time. After he left, I assembled the rest of this myself (and didn’t paint the inner sticks). The last step was supposed to be inserting the strings through the slats to hang them up, but I couldn’t get the strings to go through after the glue had dried, so I gave up.

This project was kind of a dud for us. In addition to the problems listed above, we have a cat, and she’s a mighty huntress. She actually brought a bird to the foot of our bed the other day. We probably shouldn’t put up a bird feeder.

Our second project was creating some binoculars for bird watching! Again, all supplies were included except for scissors.

This project, on the other hand, was a lot of fun, and they turned out great! My son made the pair on the left and I made the ones on the right. Yes, he hogged all the cool stickers! They don’t actually enlarge the image of what you’re looking at through them, but keep in mind that this subscription is all about pretending.

Verdict: This is the second box we’ve received from My Pretend Place crafts, and we had issues with both boxes. In this case, one project was a big success, the other one was not. I don’t think a child in the suggested age range could complete the bird feeder project, and if they did somehow, I don’t think they would enjoy it. The binoculars project, on the other hand, was great. I also love that they include enough materials for two children to complete the projects together! I will have to try giving up my part and letting another kid do this with my son sometime.

What do you think of My Pretend Place’s crafts offering?