Kiwi Crate (from parent company KiwiCo) is a subscription box for children ages 5-8. It arrives every month with all the materials and instructions needed to complete 2-3 crafts centered around a theme, plus additional materials to help educate young learners!
KiwiCo offers boxes for different age groups: Cricket Crate is for 24-36-month-olds, Koala Crate is for 3-4-year-olds, Kiwi Crate is for 5-8-year-olds, and Doodle Crate and Tinker Crate are for 9-16+-year-olds. There really is something for every age with this company.
This review is of the $19.95 a month Kiwi Crate box, for 5-8-year-olds.
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).
About Kiwi Crate
The Subscription Box: Kiwi Crate
The Cost: $19.95 per month + free shipping
The Products: Crafts and DIY projects for kids, with supplemental learning kits, booklets, and activities. Crates are filled with materials and inspiration to encourage creativity and curiosity. Projects cover a number of developmental areas through art, science, and imaginative play.
Ships to: U.S. for free, Canada for $6.95 per month
Kiwi Crate September 2018 "Capillary Action" Review
The theme for this month was Capillary Action. This was the included booklet that showed us the various activities in our crate and provided instructions. The pictures are very clear- detailed and in color- and I like that they always provide a materials list for everything that should be in your crate.
On the back of the booklet was our sticker for this month’s project and their social media links.
This is the little sticker chart that we received in our first Kiwi Crate along with our welcome note. This time we got to add our Capillary Action sticker after we completed our projects.
Each month you get a Kiwi Explore! magazine that goes along with your crate’s theme. There is a letter from Steve the Kiwi and a little story to go along with the theme starring some cute characters. This month the gang is taking care of a tree. The rest of the magazine is filled with additional activities and information about capillary action in everyday life.
Some of the activities this month included a maze, exploring water power, and making rainbow flowers.
They also included this recipe for capillary "snack-tion" straws. Cute!
The first activity in our box was to make capillary action art.
The first step was to place the little square double-sided stickers on two of the red squares, then to place a clear slide on top and add three more stickers to the green squares.
Next, we added the green strings and covered them with a white paper flower. Then, we added more stickers to the red squares and placed another slide on top of that to sandwich the flowers inside.
We used the enclosed clips and placed them in the locations that they specified.
We received a red and yellow liquid color and a little paint tray to place them in. We made our own orange by mixing them together.
We then placed our flower slide on top with the stems in each of the three colors. The clips were perfect for holding the slides upright.
It only took a few seconds for the capillary action to take place and begin to spread color to our flowers and while we watched, we were able to talk about what was happening using this little blurb they provided about how it worked.
It was like magic to watch the flowers fill up with color and after a minute they were fully colored.
They even included a frame to put our beautiful artwork in. We let the flowers dry overnight and then used the stickers on our frame to secure it all in place. Beautiful!
The best part is that they provided us with enough materials for us to do this experiment twice. They even provided an extra frame so we could make a second piece of artwork.
Our second project was to make a balancing tree.
We slid the two longer wooden pieces together using the notches and then turned it over to add a colored paper and disc to the base. We secured it using a small rubber band and then our tree was ready to go.
They included wooden pieces that we could use as roots to balance our tree and also leaves to add to the branches.
Whenever leaves were added it would throw the tree off balance and we were able to correct it by adding more leaves or roots to stabilize it. This was fun on its own, but even better, they included instructions for a game that we could play using our balancing tree.
We rolled the die that they gave us and added leaves or roots to the section of the tree that matched the color we rolled. They provided a key for this and if you get the exclamation point that meant there was a disaster and you rolled again to see which disaster occurred. This was really fun for my daughter and me to play. When it was a tornado you would blow really hard on your tree for three seconds or if there was an earthquake we got to shake the table for three seconds. This was so silly, simple and fun to play. There were no clear winners or anything, but the game itself provided enough entertainment for us! It will also be an easy game to take apart for travel or storage since it is so simple to put together.
Verdict: This was another wonderful Kiwi Crate for us with just enough educational information and a fun project that felt magical as we got to watch our flowers change before our eyes. Plus it was nice to be able to keep it as a piece of art. I also liked the inclusion of the game because it is something we can play over and over again. Everything is always so well organized and planned out to the point that you really don't need to do any prep or planning, but instead, you just follow the clear directions. They make it so easy and this month was definitely full of activities that a child could easily complete on their own since they provided those extra steps to make it easy to follow. The cost of $19.95 plus free shipping is a great value for the experience we had this month exploring capillary action and balancing trees.
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? It is possible you might get this crate, but it is not a guarantee. From KiwiCo:
Crates are assigned each month based on availability and your crate history - not all subscribers receive the same theme each month.
Coupon – Save 40% off your first month! No coupon required, just use this link!
Check out all of our Kiwi Crate reviews and more boxes for ages 5-8 in the Kids Subscription Box Directory!
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