Green Kid Crafts is a kids subscription box company that sends you up to six science and art kits each month for $29.95 (plus free shipping).
Green Kid Crafts strives to encourage the growth of the "whole child," which includes fostering a sense of care for our environment. Their process and products seek to have a minimal environmental impact, and the activities in each box aim to help kids engage with nature in creative ways. It's not surprising that Green Kid Crafts was actually founded by an environmental scientist!
Choose between the Junior Discovery Box (ages 2-4) or the Discovery Box (ages 5-10+), both of which are $29.95/month. Green Kid Crafts also offers a Sibling Discovery Box (ages 2-10+) for $49.95/month, which sends two of each project. All subscriptions include free shipping.
This is a review of the Junior Discovery Box, which costs $29.95/month + free shipping.
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 Green Kid Crafts Junior Discovery Box
The Subscription Box: Green Kid Crafts Junior Discovery Box
The Cost: $29.95 per month + free shipping. Save with longer subscriptions.
The Products: Materials and instructions for up to 6 science and art projects aimed at helping children ages 2-4 get creative and engage with nature.
Ships to: US for free, to Canada and select countries for a flat rate of $15.00/month
Good to Know: Their product offerings and pricing have recently changed!
Green Kid Crafts "Amphibians" Box Review June 2019
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Included in our box was a booklet that highlighted our theme of "Amphibians" and offered some basic information about what they are along with instructions for our five projects for this month. The pages also included some fun extra activities like a maze and a fill in the blank story as well as some book suggestions.
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Each box includes a new sticker for us to add to our Green Kid Crafts badge chart. This month we received the Amphibian Expert badge.
Project 1: Frog Life Cycle Scene
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Our first project was to make a sticker scene showing the life cycle of a frog. They provided a pond background sheet and a sheet of repositionable stickers depicting frogs at various stages of life, some flies, lilypads, and waterlilies. My daughter got to work creating her scene and then we talked about the different stages of a frog and labeled the parts using the stickers they provided.
Here is her finished scene showing the eggs, tadpoles, froglets, and frog stages. The booklet provided some "things to think about" to help guide our scene such as, why are there fly stickers, and what is happening in your pond, which I thought were helpful.
Project 2: Clay Model Life Cycle
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Model Magic 1 oz Pack in White - Buy a 3 oz pack for $9.21
Our next project was to use Model Magic to create frogs at various stages of their lifecycle. While they included information about embryos and tadpoles with two legs, we stuck to four basic stages of eggs, tadpole, froglet, and frog since the amount of clay was limited. My daughter created the eggs while my son and I worked on the tadpole and froglet together. My husband helped my daughter with her frog after she got a bit frustrated with trying to form the legs.
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Once we had our four stages we used the paint and brush that they provided to add some color to them.
Here are our painted frogs! I thought they turned out pretty well and the kids seemed to enjoy this project! I just wish they had provided a bit more clay or maybe even some basic suggestions for how to create them out of clay.
Project 3: Grow Your Own Lotus
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Our next project was to grow our own lotus plants using the bowl and two seeds they provided. Since this was really just a matter of placing the lotus seeds in the dish with some water, they included two frog and two fish figurines for us to use to play and decorate with. They also suggested that an adult make a small slit in the center of the seed shell to help them grow, but I had a hard time doing this and gave up before I injured myself!
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I let my son pour the water into our bowl and then he had some fun setting it up and playing with the figurines. So far we haven't had any growth yet, so we'll see!
Project 4: Frog on a Lily Pad
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Next, we received this set for making our own foam frog on a lilypad. This was a cute activity that simply involved removing adhesive and sticking the pieces of the frog together.
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Then my son and I put the pieces of the flowers together and I helped him slide a brad in the middle to secure it to our foam lily pad base.
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Then we just had to add our big frog to the slit in our lilypad.
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He turned out pretty cute and my son was happy to see that he was able to float in a dish of water just like a real lilypad!
Project 5: Letter Jump Frogs
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Our last project was more of a game and it included using these two plastic jumping frogs and some lilypad letters that I made for us. When you push on that little rectangle "tail" the frogs jump forward a bit. We used this for letter recognition practice, but this is a great activity that can be used for spelling or even counting activities, too!
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He had some fun trying to get his frog to jump to the letters as I called them out.
Here's a quick clip to show you how they work!
Verdict: This month's Green Kid Crafts theme of Amphibians definitely appealed to my kids! They loved learning about frogs and their life cycles and creating their own frogs with several different mediums. The five different projects all felt appropriate for the recommended ages of 2-4 and while we enjoyed them, I didn't feel like the value was there for a $29.95 box. I also feel like for a box with a "green" mission they certainly included a lot of disposable materials that didn't seem like they would make a minimal environmental impact, although I can't be sure because the only item they point out as being reusable & recyclable are the plastic bags the projects come in. While there might be a lot of "green" initiatives happening behind the scenes, they weren't apparent through the materials and information we received. I'd love to see projects based on more eco-friendly materials that could be recycled or composted which would help to change my perception with regards to the value we received.
To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? Here's what Green Kid Crafts says:
The first box of all subscription orders will ship immediately, through the 25th of the month. After the 25th, the initial box will ship with the following month’s mid-month shipment. After the first month, subsequent boxes will ship around the middle of the month.
Check out all of our Green Kid Crafts reviews and the best kid subscription boxes for more kids activities!
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