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My kids love Kiwi Crate, but they haven’t seen a new box in a while: they were eager to try Doodle Crate when the company rolled out additional lines last year, and I made them pick one. (Mean mom, I know.) My kids were thrilled to see a Kiwi Crate box again in the house recently.
kiwi crate 2

Kiwi Crate is a monthly subscription service that focuses on creative fun with an educational bent. Each crate includes two – three hands-on projects centered around that month’s theme (gardening, dinosaurs, science, etc), plus Kiwi Crate’s explore! magazine filled with things like bonus activities and kid-friendly recipes. (Get a feel for what monthly shipments are like by checking out some popular past crates.)

kiwi crate 1

This month’s theme was Let’s Bake. My kids love to bake, especially Sarah—and our crate happened to arrive on her birthday. The crate included materials and instructions for two crafts—chef dress-up and a frosted cake (which we immediately declared to be a birthday cake)—plus a booklet about the science of baking, with instructions for a bread-making experiment.

kiwi crate 3

The Kiwi Crate line is designed for ages 4-8, but the ages are fluid: Sarah just turned 10, and she loved this crate. Silas (age 5) and Lucy (age 7) thoroughly enjoyed it, although they needed a little help from Sarah with their projects. That worked out great for me: many parents enjoy doing these activities with their kids, but I am not one of them. I’d rather hand them the box and turn them loose, and my kids want the satisfaction of doing the crafts all by themselves anyway.

kiwi crate 5

We used a single crate for three kids to share. In the past, we’ve experimented with the “sibling add-on”—pay an extra $9.95 and Kiwi Crate will include extra materials so two kids can share. But Kiwi Crate provides a generous amount of materials for one child, and I’ve found that most of the time two (or even three, like this time) kids can share the kit without any problems.

kiwi crate 7

My kids loved the Let’s Bake crate and spent a full afternoon with it: they made the cake, they decorated their chef’s hat and apron, they held elaborate birthday parties, first for Sarah and then for Honey the puppy.

kiwi crate 4

But in the years we’ve used Kiwi Crate, my favorite part of the service has been what happens after the crates are used up. My kids always use the leftover materials to improvise crafts of their own. Sarah and Lucy create Kiwi Crate-style kits for each other, modeling their own dreamed-up activities after the crates. And Sarah loves to find and adapt recipes and projects from the Kiwi Crate website. (Their website is fantastic and completely free. Sarah especially loves their DIY ideas.)

kiwi crate 8

Another tip: I don’t usually hand over the crate the day it arrives. Instead, I try to snatch it out of the mail before the kids see, stash it in my closet, and pull it out when the time is right. It’s my insurance policy against a rainy day, a canceled playdate, or an afternoon when I really need to get some work done. (If they had received the subscription as a gift—as many kids do—that would be another story!)

kiwi crate 6

Monthly subscriptions start at $16.95; all subscriptions ship free. I finally gave Kiwi Crate a try when I found a discount code so I’m happy to have one for you today: save 30% on your first month subscription with code DARCY30. (Excludes sibling add-ons.) This code applies to any of Kiwi Crate’s lines.

Thanks to Kiwi Crate for sponsoring this post.

4 comments

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  1. Sarah M says:

    My builder kid LOVES (I mean LOVES) Tinker Crate. Honestly, we could just get him a subscription for his birthday and his xmas gift and he’d be super happy with it. I love that the materials are high quality (there are many kids ‘sets’ that I feel have pretty sub-par pieces, but this is not the case with TC), and that instructions are so clear. I also found out they do a video on the tinker site for your crate (along with other projects that are similar to that month’s theme that you can do with household materials) if you’re having difficulty. My kid is 7 and I feel he may be fairly gifted in stem-related activities…he can do everything completely by himself and he is also one of those kids who I just give the box to and he disappears for a few hours. It’s a really high quality subscription, imo. I like the branding, too!
    Sarah M

  2. Procrastination FTW!

    Was going to get a subscription for Eleanor’s birthday in a few weeks… but now I get a discount! 🙂 We had it for a few months about a year and a half ago, and she loved it, but I had to help her a LOT (since she was only 3.5). Hoping she’ll do it independently this time around.

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