Girls Can! Crate is a monthly subscription box that inspires girls ages 5-10 to believe they can be and do anything by introducing them to fearless women who made the world better.
Each box will include a 20-page activity book telling the featured woman’s unique story (as well as games, experiments, & more), 2-3 hands-on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) activities related to her field, a creative play prop, a featured character trait that helped her succeed and 2-3 practical tips for parents to easily foster that trait, and more. The boxes are designed to encourage a love for STEAM, to foster creativity, curiosity, and support literacy development. With every box purchased, Girls Can! Crate donates 10% of the proceeds to nonprofit organizations working to empower women and girls.
Disclosure: I received this box for review purposes. I was not compensated in any way. All opinions are my own. Post may contain affiliate and/or referral links.
Subscriptions are $29.95/month or less with multi-month commitments. Shipping is free within the US. — For a limited time, you can save 20% on your first month with coupon code “WELCOME20“!
Let’s see what’s in my September 2020 Girls Can! Crate!
Everything was shipped in a bright red box with the Girls Can! Crate logo on top.
A peek inside!
September’s featured “fearless woman” was Mae Jemison — the first woman of color to travel into space! An information card listed all of the activities in the crate and the order in which they should be completed. The reverse side included tips for parents to encourage their girls to be just as audacious and bold as Mae.
Activity Book
A 20-page, full color activity book included the story of Mae Jemison and how hard she worked to achieve her dreams of becoming an astronaut. It also included puzzles, games, experiments, and more. All of the activity instructions were printed in the booklet as well.
Challenge #1: Blast Off Rockets
The first activity had us building and launching our own rocket. Materials included a red plastic rocket, launch pad, rocket fuel tablets, and rubber gloves.
Unfortunately, the day we began working on this box was super windy, so we haven’t gotten a chance to do this yet. (It needs to be done outside.) I’ll update the post once we’ve done it.
Challenge #2: Design a Solar System Model
The second activity was to create a solar system model decoration. Materials included foam planets, a foam ring, a mobil strip, salt, glue, 8 eye pins, string, toothpicks, a set of paints, and a planet help sheet.
First, we needed to line up all of the planets by size — largest to smallest.
Next, we had to push an eye pin into each ball. Saturn needed its ring attached using included metal pins (referred to as toothpicks in the instructions).
In order for the paint to stick to the planets, we had to make a glue mixture that would be used to hold a layer of salt.
After pouring the full bottle of glue into a cup, we filled the empty bottle with warm water and mixed it into the glue.
Next, we poured the full bag of salt into a separate bowl.
All of the balls were then painted with the glue mixture…
…and then sprinkled with salt.
Once they were all painted/salted, we had to let them dry for at least 2 hours.
Then it was time to paint! — We referred to the Planet Help Sheet to find the correct sizes and color combinations for each planet.
Once painted, we placed the planets back inside the crate to dry.
After they were dried, it was time to construct the mobile. The first step was to measure and cut strings for each planet as indicated on the Planet Help Sheet.
Pushing the string through the tiny eye pins was quite a challenge, as the ends kept on fraying. Needless to say, I took over this part of the project (and it wasn’t easy!).
Once all of the strings were added, we had to tie them onto the yellow mobile strip where indicated.
And finally our mobile was complete! (Apologies for the not-so-stellar final photo — it was a long night! 😉 )
Challenge #3: Exploring Gravity
The third activity had us exploring gravity by seeing which kind of items fall to the earth faster. Materials included a “moon rock” (pom-pom) and a gravity observation sheet.
The final activity was pretty simple. We needed to gather a collection of round objects from home, along with the moon rock (black pom-pom) from the box. Using the Exploring Gravity sheet, we had to list all of our items, decide whether they were heavy or light, and how fast we thought they would fall to the ground.
I didn’t take any photos of the objects falling, but we were surprised to find that all of them landed at the same time. — The booklet explains that the earth’s gravitational pull ensures that all objects, no matter their weight, fall at the same rate.
Once all of the activities were complete, we had officially earned our Mae Jemison collectible button. 
Our September 2020 Girls Can! Crate was a fun exploration into the world of planets and space. We had actually recently learned about Mae Jemison in another subscription box, so the girls were excited to see her again and share what they already knew about her accomplishments. I was impressed that they remembered so much! 😀 — Remember for a limited time, you can save 20% on your first month with coupon code “WELCOME20“!
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