January’s Koala Crate (“Arctic”) featured a selection of fun winter-inspired crafts and projects to keep your kiddos entertained during this cold & dreary month.
If you’re new to them, Koala Crate is a children’s subscription box from the same company who runs Kiwi Crate. While Kiwi Crate is for kids ages 4 through 8, Koala Crate is geared towards younger tots ages 3 to 4.
Every month, Koala Crate sends your little one a box packed full of fun and education activities. Each crate will be based around a different theme and include a variety of art supplies, crafts, learning materials, and more. You’ll also receive a parent’s guide to help them complete each project. Every crate comes with a copy of “Imagine!” magazine (created in partnership with Highlights for Children) full of stories, games, and other engaging content for your preschooler.
Koala Crate subscriptions are $19.95/month (shipping included), or less with 6- and 12-month commitments. — You can save 40% on your first box with coupon code “ROSEBUDS40“.
Let’s see what’s in the January 2016 Koala Crate!
The “crate”!
A peek inside.
A detailed instruction booklet lists all of the projects, the materials needed for each one, directions, and more. There were 3 different activities for this month with additional play ideas.
The main activities were “Polar Bear Dress Up”, “Snowball Toss”, and “Sparkly Snowflake Stamp”. Each activity is rated in terms of grownup involvement and overall messiness.
Polar Bear Dress Up:
Polar Bear Dress Up included a headband, felt ears, felt mittens, felt paw stickers, and lacing yarn. Your child can use the felt mittens and yarn to lace together a pair of “paws” and then apply the self adhesive paw pad (or claw) stickers to complete the look. A headband was also provided, along with self adhesive polar bear ears.
My girls are 3, so I had to help a bit with the lacing, but they started to get the hang of it.
Sticking the paw pieces on was easy peasy.
My silly Chloe bear! She was pretty into it. 😉
Snowball Toss:
Snowball Toss included fluffy yarn, a bath scrubby, sticky dots, and a ping pong ball. Two different types of snowballs were to be made — one “sticky” snowball covered in velcro dots and one “fluffy” snowball made out of the scrubby.
The velcro-covered snowball “magically” sticks to the bear mittens, which Chloe was thoroughly entertained by. (Oh, to be 3 again…)
I decided to tackle the “fluffy” snowball myself and was surprised that it actually turned out… well, fluffy. All you had to do was wrap the yarn around the bath scrubby and tuck the end inside. Easy!
Sparkle Snowflake Stamp:
Sparkle Snowflake Stamp included yarn/a needle, a foam handle, an ink pad, foam stamp, and wrapping paper. This one was high on the scale for both messiness and grownup involvement. You were to string the thread through the holes in the snowflake in any pattern that you like, tie off the end, and attach the self adhesive handle to the back. Once the stamp was complete, your little one could use the provided silver ink pad to make a pretty pattern on the sheet of blue wrapping paper.
I handled the threading, but the girls took turns stamping the design onto the sheet. The silver ink looked so fancy on the dark blue paper!
Pretty!! The only setback we had was that the ink was still wet the next day… I checked it not too long ago and it was still wet. Weird.
Imagine! Magazine – I almost forgot to include this! — Koala Crate partners with Highlights to create little activity books for each box based on that month’s theme. It has stories, games, riddles, coloring pages, and more. (This definitely came in handy for entertaining the girls while I did the “grownup steps” in each project.)
Perpetually wet ink aside, I thought January’s Koala Crate was great! My girls had a lot of fun with each project and I like that everything can be played with and/or used, rather than just displayed on a shelf like some craft projects. The inclusion of the activity book is a nice bonus too. Overall, a great subscription for younger kiddos not quite ready for the “older” Kiwi Crate box. 🙂
If you’d like to sign up for Koala Crate, you can save 40% with my exclusive coupon code “ROSEBUDS40″ (good on Kiwi Crate, Doodle Crate, and Tinker Crate too!).
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.
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