Raya’s Kiwi Crate Farm Adventure

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Kiwi Crate.

If you take nothing else from this story I’m about to share, consider this: I gave my 3-year old kid a Kiwi Crate adventure box, and we played for TWO. HOURS. with it.  Parents everywhere know this is record-setting on the attention span scale for a child this age.  When we were done she asked if there were any more activities.

Let that sink in for a minute… total toddler immersion.  I’m as impressed as you are.

So what’s a Kiwi Crate, and how can you get one for your little one, with engagement like this?  Let me tell you all about it.  Accompanied by lots of photos of my adorable child.  Because I’m a parent with a camera.  Hey, if you read here often, this should not surprise you. ;)

Kiwi Crate is a monthly subscription activity box that’s got all the stuff you need to do themed activities with your child.  It’s geared toward kids between the ages of 3 and 8.  I know you all know I’m crafty, and we keep a lot of supplies on-hand, but these made it really easy to just open ONE box, and get to work with all the materials included.  That’s right, parents – and especially grandparents – it’s all self-contained with everything you need!  If you don’t regularly stock up on kids’ supplies, this is the perfect solution for a rainy day or for when the kids are visiting.  There’s just one thing to open, and you can dive right in.  You can order a subscription for as long as you need, whether you want to try just one month, try out the Summer Adventure Series, or order a whole year.  You can cancel anytime, or let it automatically renew.  Super easy – they send it right to your door!

We were sent a barnyard activity box, and little miss was really excited to find out what was inside.  The themes in our box were how to grow things, and barnyard animals.  We got out the animal stuff first and Raya got to play with making her own set of finger puppets.

This may not seem revolutionary, but my daughter actually hasn’t done much with faces yet.  Like, we had to talk about where the nose should go, and the eyes.  She wanted some reassurance from me at first (she’s a bit of a perfectionist) but by the time we got through a couple she was a pro working on her own.  And after we talked about how faces are arranged… she’s started drawing them now, too.  Something like simple assembly can still spark a concept about shapes and elements for creative depiction.

Plus it’s totally fun to make a cute set of finger puppets.  There’s that too.

She had more fun creating and collecting them and lining them up, identifying them and making their noises, but older kids who zip through assembly can set up their own puppet theater and put on a little show.

“What’s next?”  she wanted to know when we had mooed and oinked for a while.  Which made me nervous, because we had been at it for a while, and do I really want my 3-year old playing in dirt at the kitchen table?  Should we wait until tomorrow and do it outside instead?  It turns out I had nothing to worry about.  It was actually designed to be minimally messy, and my daughter rocked her tiny little green thumb as she learned about soil, seeds, and working a miniature plot.  Check out Raya’s farm!

When I say these boxes come with everything, they even came with soil and seeds.  We had to re-hydrate the soil, and then plant grass seeds and radishes.

Look at her go!  Covering the seeds was a little tough for her at her coordination level, so I got out my own “shovel” and helped her get them buried.

We “built” a little farm fence, labeled our crops, and Raya was pumped to take her garden outside.  Look at this focus and care, seriously.  This is the most pride I’ve seen her take in any activity we’ve done so far.

The tough thing about seeds and planting is the attention span of kids. Fortunately, radishes grow amazingly quickly.  Look at those sprouts!  This is about 2 – 1/2 days later.

For older kids, there’s a growth chart that they can observe their garden and track the daily progress.  So kids of every age can get different lessons from the activities.

All right, so I’ve showed off how much fun *we* had with these activities, and the best thing is, every month the theme is different.  There’s a special code you can use to get a 25% discount on your first month’s crate when you start a new subscription, just visit the Kiwi Crate site and enter SUMMER25 at checkout.  If you subscribe by June 17, your first crate will be the camping-themed crate (subscriptions that begin after June 17 will start with the beach themed crate).

Do you have any creative summertime activities planned?  I would love to hear if you have kids or grandkids who would be into this, now that I’ve shared how much Raya enjoyed her barnyard adventure crate.  Leave me a comment, and feel free to ask any questions you may have!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Kiwi Crate.