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 review is of KiwiCo’s Kiwi Crate (for ages 5-8), which costs $19.95 per month.
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 "Ice Lab" Review February 2020
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Our theme for this month is Ice Lab 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 that we received in our first Kiwi Crate along with our welcome note.
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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 learn what happens when you touch ice with wet gloves!
Project 1: Icy Experiment
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The first step before we could get started was to use this silicone tray they provided to freeze up some ice cubes.
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When we were ready for the first experiment, we went ahead and popped them out into a bowl to make them easier to grab.
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I filled up the two cups they provided with some water.
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My daughter then added a scoop of regular salt to one of the cups.
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Then we filled each cup with our freshly made ice cubes.
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Next, we added a few drops of liquid watercolor to each cup and observed what happened.
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They provided a section in our booklet where we could record our observations. There were two cup drawings and my daughter went ahead and illustrated how the watercolor looked in each cup. We learned about density and why the watercolor stayed at the top of the cup filled with salt but sank and dispersed into the cup with no salt. This was a great visual lesson!
Project 2: Crystal Snowflakes
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Next, it was time to make some crystal snowflakes. They provided these three plastic snowflakes for us and each had a hole in the top for it to be hung after we were done.
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Once I rinsed our cups out, my daughter added a scoop of Epsom salts to one of them along with a scoop of water.
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Then she added several drops of this clear gel to the cup.
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She used the paintbrush that they provided to mix it all together and then she painted the mixture over the surface of each of the snowflakes.
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We waited an hour and then I cut the yarn they provided into three pieces so that each could be hung up. Now we can hang them up in the window and watch the sun sparkle through them!
Ice Lab Book Projects
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In addition to the first two projects we completed, they also included this great little Ice Lab book for us that contained several more ice-related projects for us to try out. This book is small and features colored photos and more clear instructions with detailed illustrations. There is a ton of great information in this booklet and even a section for notes at the end.
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While we didn't get to each of the Ice Lab book projects, we did test out a few while we had our ice out! First, we tried the Salt Tunnels experiment where we put some ice cubes in a pile and sprinkled them with some salt. Then we added a few drops of the liquid watercolor and observed what happened.
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We also tried the Sticky String experiment by using the yarn they provided before I cut it up for our snowflakes (luckily, I thought to read ahead for once and we used the yarn for this first!). We put our ice cubes in a bowl and then my son placed the yarn over the top of the cubes before sprinkling some salt on them.
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We waited a minute and then he began to pull the yarn up to see what happened, which was that the ice was sticking to the yarn. He thought this was pretty cool!
Once we were done experimenting, my daughter had some fun completing the symmetrical snowflake activity in our magazine!
Verdict: There were so many ways to explore ice with this month's Kiwi Crate projects! I love that they provided everything we needed for our experiments and an extra Ice Lab book with more experiments for us to test out. They even encouraged coming up with our own experiments, which will be fun to expand on, and easy to do since they were generous with the amount of salt and liquid watercolors they provided for us. I thought this was a great lesson with a lot of educational information, and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, too! This was another well-organized box that we had a lot of fun with for $19.95 (plus free shipping)!
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!
Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!
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