Kiwi Crate is a subscription box for kids ages 5-8 from the 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!
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.)
First Impressions
This month's box looked like it would be fun and I knew my daughter would particularly enjoy the silly stories part of our activities!
What's Inside This Box
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This booklet highlights our theme for the month and it includes colorful, detailed illustrations to go along with our easy-to-follow instructions. On the back of the booklet, they include their social media links and a sticker for this month’s project. It looks like we have a few different activities this month.
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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Our Kiwi Explore! magazine is always a nice bonus complete with a comic and some extra activities that really enhance our lessons each month! It's educational and full of fun and useful activities for us to try.
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This month we received lots of wooden pieces, plastic parts, and rubber bands in addition to the main box for our probability machine and the little paper pieces to form the wheels.
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We also received some markers, tape, some stickers, a wooden token, and a book of silly stories to work on.
Activity 1: Chance Experiment
The first activity was a very simple introduction to probability. My daughter wrote down a yes or no question, and then we used the wooden coin they provided to answer yes or no (heads or tails). I thought this was an effective and age-appropriate way to get started on our box theme!
Activity 2: Probability Machine
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Next, she built her probability machine. The first step was preparing the wheels by folding up the templates and placing the plastic cover over them. She added a weighted metal ball and then sealed them up with a wooden piece and a foam ring. Then it was just a matter of adding the wheels to the box and preparing the bar that would help spin the wheels. All steps were made easy with the thorough instructions they provided.
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To operate the machine she just had to pull down on either side of the back bar then let it go and they would spin.
Activity 3: Silly Stories
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Now it was time to make some silly stories using our machine. We took the colored stickers they provided and placed them on the panels of each wheel. These were cling stickers that could easily be removed and each had different words on them for us to use to fill in our stories. They even provided a dry erase marker so that we could write in our own words on the wheels if we wanted to.
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Here is a look at the silly stories pages. We did Story 1, and it was as easy as spinning the wheels and then writing down whichever word coordinated with the colors of the blank spaces on the page. We ended up with a fancy pineapple who had a dance-off with a kiwi at some point! I love how fun this is and that there are so many more pages to fill up and ways to play!
Activity 4: Probability Picture
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For this activity, we had to remove our word stickers from our machine and replace the first two wheels with dice stickers for the numbers 1-6. Then we used our machine to add washi tape lines on our round paper from the two numbers we spun. We continued until we had a tape line from each of the 6 numbers, then she colored in between the tape spaces with the markers they provided.
Then she removed the washi tape to reveal her design. I thought it turned out great! They even suggested doing this with chalk and masking tape in the summer which I think could be a fun outdoor math lesson!
Value - Was This Box Worth It?
The Cost: $19.95
There were so many different ways to explore the idea of probability! I loved that we got to build something, but also apply our knowledge to several different activities. I think that range made it well worth it and we still have so many follow up activities that will help extend our lesson!
Key Takeaways
This box was well organized, the activities were fun and engaging, and they provided quality materials for us to work with. We had a lot of fun learning about probability this month!
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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.
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