Kiwi Crate is a subscription box for kids ages 5-8 from parent company KiwiCo. It arrives every month with all the materials and instructions needed to complete 2-3 crafts centered on a theme, plus additional materials to help educate young learners!
KiwiCo offers boxes for different age groups:
- Panda Crate for 0-24-month-olds,
- Koala Crate for 2-4-year-olds,
- Kiwi Crate for 5-8-year-olds,
- Atlas Crate for 6-11-year-olds,
- Doodle Crate and Tinker Crate for 9-16+-year-olds,
- Eureka Crate and Maker Crate for ages 14 and up.
There really is something for every age with this company!
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 by KiwiCo
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: The U.S. for free, Canada for $3.95, and worldwide from $4.95-$6.95
KiwiCo Kiwi Crate "Surface Tension Science" Review December 2020
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Our theme for this month is Surface Tension Science and we received this booklet which contains the directions for our activities. This includes detailed, colored illustrations and clear instructions that are easy to follow. They broke down our project into various sections that simplified the process for us. On the back of the booklet, they include their social media links and a sticker for this month’s project.
This is the little sticker chart we received in our first Kiwi Crate along with our welcome note that we can add our sticker to.
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Each month you also get a Kiwi Explore! magazine with a letter from Steve the Kiwi and a little comic to go along with the theme starring some cute characters. This month they included some extra experiments for us to try, a recipe, and a fun puzzle.
Part A: Build a Blob
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The first way we explored surface tension was by using a piece of wax paper and some watercolors in red, yellow, and blue.
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This was a really simple, but fun and effective way to teach about surface tension. My daughter just added some different dots of watercolor onto her wax paper and then used the small wooden stick to move them around into a giant blob. She was amazed at the way the water droplets just rolled across the wax paper and she loved mixing the colors.
She was stunned when she used a paper towel and managed to suck up the entire blob in one quick dab.
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Both of her brothers had a turn exploring with the watercolors and she even went back to this activity later on because it was so much fun.
Part B: Water Maze
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The next activity was another simple one. They provided these maze pieces which included a foam maze core and a plastic circle with a hole in it as well as a brad to connect them.
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My daughter followed the directions to stack the pieces and then add the brad to hold them together. The last picture is after we were finished when we realized we were missing the center piece, but it was easy enough to add it in later.
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I filled up the dropper they provided with water and then my daughter added a nice size droplet into the hole at the top of the maze. She maneuvered it around trying to get it to the center making sure to avoid the sides which would absorb the water if she touched them. This was another fun and simple activity that my kids thoroughly enjoyed.
My son was eager to test it out, too!
Part C: Sticky Yarn
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The next activity was called sticky yarn. Since my kids were very involved in the other activities, I got this one set up for them (this would have been very easy for them to do on their own though). They provided a plastic container and a cup for our water along with some yarn and green foam discs.
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I threaded each end of the yarn through the holes on each of the green foam discs then I removed the backing to reveal the sticky part and stuck one circle onto the bottom of the cup inside and one onto the inside bottom of the bowl. Then I stuck the cup into the bowl and made sure to wet the yarn.
It's really hard to see in this photo (and it was even harder to try and get a video), but I lifted the cup until it was taut and then I began to pour out the water into the bowl. The water followed the yarn line as it poured out. My kids were certainly amazed at this bit of scientific magic!
Part D: Water Strider
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Our last activity involved using some thin wires and various wooden pieces along with our bowl of water and some of the little foam pieces that came packaged with our foam discs.
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First, we put together some of the wooden pieces to make a little dipper to lower our pieces into the water when it was time.
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Then we used the wooden pieces to shape and mold our wires. This was such an unexpected, but fun method of shaping our wires; we simply placed the wire in the center of the two pieces and then pushed them together. There was a zig-zag line, a wavy line, a star (tricky, but cool to make!), and even a spiral, although I didn't have much luck with the spiral shaper when I tried it.
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Once we had our wire shapes made, we used our dipper to lower them into the water carefully so that they would float on top of the water. One wrong move and it was easy for our shapes to sink.
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After playing around with the shapes for a bit, we then made a water strider using 3 pieces of wire sandwiched between the tiny foam sticky shapes. Then we shaped our legs and our strider was ready to walk on water!
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My son lowered him into the water for us using the dipper. We had materials to make a few more, but just this one was enough to entertain them for a bit.
Verdict: This surface tension-themed Kiwi Crate was such a hit with my kids! While this didn't include one main activity like there usually is, we found ourselves having a good time trying out the variety of quick little activities they included. The kids were really engaged with it all and went back to the different activities multiple times. It was like having a fun little water-themed playtime and I appreciated how exploratory this box was! It was educational, well-organized, and even with so many activities, I found it really easy to keep my children focused. Of course, we got a little bit of water on the table, but the fun far outweighed the little bit of clean up I had to do!
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.
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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