Kidspire Crate is a children’s subscription box that features fun activities centered around a new female role model every month.
Each box will include a book that introduces that month’s inspiring female and teaches your child all about her accomplishments. After reading the book, you’ll move onto activities, crafts, and/or experiments — which are all centered around the featured female (aka “SHEro”) and her specific field.
There are currently two box options to choose from: Spark Box (ages 3-6) and Ignite Box (ages 6-9). Sibling boxes are also available.
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 start at $40.95 (CAD)/month, or less with multi-month commitments. Shipping is an additional $9.95/month to both Canada and the continental US.
Let’s see what’s in the August 2020 Kidspire Crate!
Everything was shipped in a dark blue box with the Kidspire Crate logo on top.
A peek inside!
Every box comes with a newsletter for parents which includes information about that month’s featured SHEro and a few discussion questions to encourage age-appropriate conversations with your child.
August’s featured SHEro was Mae Jemison — the first woman of color to travel into space! The card above included some fun facts about Mae, the solar system, and more.
You Should Meet: Mae Jemison (Ready-to-Read Level 3)
To help us learn even more about Mae, we received a book all about her life — from her early dreams of traveling to space, to accomplishing that very goal, and all of her other achievements in between.
Meet Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut! Did you know before Mae was an astronaut, she went to medical school and joined the Peace Corps? But she never forgot her childhood dream to travel to outer space. So in 1985 she applied to NASA’s astronaut training program. On September 12, 1992, Mae flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour and made history—just like you can if you follow your dreams!
The book was perfect for my daughters’ grade level (both are going into third) and explained things in an easy-to-comprehend, kid-friendly manner.
Next up, crafts! — Because we received the Siblings Box (Ignite Box 6-9 version), there were two sets of each activity.
Galaxy in a Jar
Our first activity was to create our own galaxy and learn about the different properties of liquids. Materials included a plastic jar, food coloring, star glitter, powder/fine glitter, and baby oil.
The first step (not shown) was to pour the baby oil into the plastic jar and fill the empty baby oil jar with 125ml of water. Once filled, we needed to add a few drops of food coloring until we reach our desired shade.
Next, the glitter and stars were to be added to the plastic baby oil-filled jar, but my kiddos were a little too eager to add them and ended up tossing them into the water jar instead. No biggie.
The final step was to pour the colored water mixture into the larger oil-filled bottle, which looked really neat when combined. We finished up by tightly screwing the lids on and…
…after a few shakes, both bottles began to leak. 🙁
It was an oily, glittery mess. Sadly, we had to pour most of them out after I tried to relocate the mixture into the glass baby oil jars instead (which were small and didn’t have the same “galaxy” look as the larger containers). Ah well…
UPDATE: After seeing this review, Kidspire Crate sent us two new replacement sets (whose jars were tested for leaks beforehand).
We performed all of the steps in the same order as before, only with purple food coloring this time.
Once the process was complete, we were happy to find that there were ZERO leaks! Yay!!
After several days of my girls rolling these on the carpet(!), shaking them up, and flipping them upside-down, I’m happy to report that not a single drop of water/oil/glitter has escaped. 🙂
Quilled Solar System STEM Model
The second activity had us try our hand at the ancient art of paper quilling by crafting a solar system STEM model. Materials included paper quilling strips, a slotted quilling tool, space paper, and a glitter glue pen.
After the not-so-stellar experience with the first activity, I had high hopes for this one… Unfortunately, my kids were already feeling frustrated and quickly gave up on quilling once their paper slipped out of the slot one too many times for their liking.
This probably wasn’t the best activity to try when they were already getting impatient/frustrated (understandable when you’re only 7). Needless to say, I tucked the materials away to bring out when they’re feeling a bit more optimistic. 😉
Custom Portrait of Night Sky
In keeping with the space theme, August’s box included a special 8″ x 10″ custom portrait of the night’s sky on the day your child was born. It was printed on a heavy cardstock and featured a quote by Mae Jemison herself — “The thing that I have done throughout my life is to do the best job that I can and to be me”. Below the quote was the girls’ city of birth, date of birth, and co-ordinates. (Sadly, the top of the prints got a bit damaged/torn in transit, so I had to smooth them out the best I could.)
The girls thought the prints were really neat and loved that they were made just for them!
Coloring Sheets
A pair of rolled-up Mae Jemison themed coloring sheets were also included.
Being rolled up made it a little challenging to color, but with a few strategically placed water bottles, they made it work.
I’m not sure if the black marker ran out, or if she purposely made Mae go gray. 😉
Buttons
The final item was a pair of “Fight like a girl” buttons. These took a little explaining on my part, as my kiddos insisted that “fighting is bad”. Ha!
The August Kidspire Crate was kind of hit and miss for us. While we enjoyed the overall theme and contents as a whole, the two main activities were a bit of a disappointment. Although in all fairness, the quilling activity required more patience than my kids were willing to give at the time, so I can’t fault the box for that one. The galaxy in a jar activity, on the other hand, was a major let-down. We all loved the idea and were excited to see how they turned out, so the fact that the jars both leaked just felt like a big oversight. (UPDATE: New jars were sent and they were leak-free! See update in post above.) That said, we did enjoy learning about Mae Jemison and the custom sky portraits were a nice inclusion (despite the slight damage they received). With a few tweaks, I’m sure Kidspire Crate can become a great subscription box for inspiring little ones. 🙂
Leave a Reply