Review of Kiwi Crate

The advertisements for it kept popping up in my news feed, so I figured I'd try out Kiwi Crate (they have good deals & discounts for your first order, so very little risk in trying it).  Kiwi Crate is subscription where you get a themed box of age appropriate activities each month.  In this case, Kiwi Crate is geared for ages 4 thru 8. The younger kids will need more hands-on guidance than the older ones. 
Skip to the bottom paragraphs for my assessment plus a discount referral.

Our first cute green shoebox size package arrived chock full of stuff. The month's topic was insects.

It had everything inside it that you need for a given activity including the tools, supplies, instructions, and a little book full of related info and games. It had at least three projects in it, but actually more if you count the cute little games in the book and coloring pages. A lot fits in that little box.

The materials were a good quality, and the instructions were easy for the kiddos to see and for me to read and follow.  After we read through the little book and did the activities with our fingers (we'll go over them with pens & crayons later), we decided to make the clay activity -- insect tic-tac-toe. This project came with the two different colored clays (model magic -- so very easy for the kidlets to handle & mold), felt sticker shapes, adhesive googly eyes, the transparent plastic wings, pictorial instructions, and the nine space box that acts as a game board and a holder.  I helped some, but the kids mostly took over with the bigs helping the littles. That was fantastic -- it was something they could do themselves that didn't need me to jump in and help. They felt very accomplished.

In conclusion: It was EVEN BETTER than I thought it might be! It really was age appropriate in materials and complexity. The activity was just the right amount of time for the kiddos to remain interested and not want to move on before completing the project. There are still more projects in the box for us to do! I'm going to get several more days out of this. The older kids were interested and asking questions, too, so it turned into some lessons for them, as well. 

This was like having homeschool in a box. Everything already gathered and laid out for me. What could be easier?!  Perfectly stress-free for me.
Would you like $10 off when you sign up? Use this referral link -- you get a discount, and I get a little discount too. Win-win!

addendum:  The dragonfly flyer activity was fun for all. This activity was so simple and straight-forward that it also enabled them learn to follow directions and match their supplies to the pictured steps.  

(reviews of Tinker Crate and Koala Crate to come later)