Ivy Kids May 2016 Subscription Box Review

Ivy Kids is a monthly educational subscription box for children ages 3-8. Designed by early childhood educators who themselves have children, each box contains tons of fun, thematically-focused activities that help to reinforce children’s math, literacy and science skills.

I have no idea how the folks behind Ivy Kids fit so much stuff into a medium-sized box, but they manage.

This month’s kit arrived with fourteen activities. Each activity comes with an instructional sheet for parents that includes suggestions for scaffolding each activity. Ivy Kids uses the designations “Little Ivy” to describe activities appropriate for children 3-5 years of age and “Junior Ivy” to describe activities appropriate for children 5-8 years of age. I love how easy Ivy Kids makes it to tailor each activity’s difficulty level to your own child’s needs!

This month’s box’s theme was wind. We began our exploration of wind by reading the book, “The Wind Blew” by Pat Hutchins.  In this book, a huge wind blows through a town, taking people’s personal items along with it.

In the first activity, children lay out all the items the wind blew in the story in the correct sequence. They then use the cards to retell the story themselves.

To bring the story to life, children blow each of the items in order, along with the story.

My son loved blowing out through the large straw. When the activity was over, he was glad to learn that he could keep blowing in a lot of this month’s activities.

I loved this next activity because it introduces kids to the scientific method in a very low-key way, through play.

First my son made some predictions about whether or not the wind could blow certain items.

Next, my son got to see whether or not he could blow the items, using his breath as a stand-in for wind. After testing his hypothesis, he made some revisions:

We talked about the similarities and differences between items of the same and different groups. Then we made some more predictions about what other objects the wind could blow.

Next, we read about what creates the wind. We talked about windy places like Chicago and various beaches.

We talked about energy and different ways to harvest it. We talked about coal (we were vacationing in coal country), sun, water and wind and how energy is harvested from each. (Now that I’m writing this, I realize I clearly should have included natural gas and nuclear power. Oh well.) We passed a wind turbine and happily tied our discussion of it into this box!

When we returned from our vacation, we took this compact, foldable kite out for a spin.

Although he’s had trouble flying kites in the past in our neighborhood (the homes seem to block a lot of the wind), my son had some success with this foldable kite! Hopefully it’s enough to get him excited to practice for next year’s kite festival!

This activity is a two-day affair: first, paint the styrofoam. Then assemble and play with the boat.

My son insisted his boat be purple with red accents.

He was proud of the paint job, although he wasn’t sure yet what this had to do with a boat.

The following morning, he found out! He had no difficulty assembling the boat. After inserting the straw into the styrofoam, he threaded the straw through the holes in the triangle sail.

Once complete, he had fun blowing his sailboat around the bathtub.

After his initial success with the foldable kite, my son was eager to make his own.

He diligently decorated each quadrant, but was somewhat dismayed to learn that we were going to tape sticks to his masterpiece.

I liked this activity because it taught my son how to rip off tape. I hadn’t realized that he hadn’t done that before. While my son did most of the assembling, I tied the string to the sticks.

This month’s box also included a wind chime–perfect for hearing the wind blow in the garden!

My son was excited to decorate it!

Once it’s dry, we’ll put it outside to enjoy pretty music that reminds us of the fun we had with this box as the wind blows.

The pinwheel activity required some parental support.

After decorating the pinwheel, my son began the assembly himself, but eventually asked for help.

He was delighted with the end result though!

He enjoyed seeing how the wind could make it spin!

This activity was a bit like skee ball, but instead of rolling a ball, you blow a pom pom.

My son thought this was great! When he was done, we practiced adding the numbers together in our heads.

Of all the activities this month, my son found this the most frustrating. The premise is simple enough: roll the shape die; blow a pom pom along the board until it reaches the designated die; when it arrives, name the shape.

My son had trouble controlling his breath enough to get the pom pom on the designated shape. I let him place his pom pom on the appropriate shape.

In this activity, the child blows the pom pom onto a letter. Once the pom pom lands, the child names the letter and states a word that begins with the letter. You can also play were you state a word that ends with the letter.

As this game required a little less breath control than the last, my son enjoyed this one much more.

The wind sock was another two day project. First, decorate the wind sock. After the paint dries, assemble and play.

To decorate the wind sock, the child squirts some watercolor paint on a piece of paper.

Then he blows the paint with his breath using an enclosed straw.

After leaving the wind sock out to dry, tear off some streamers and affix them to the backside of the decorated piece of paper.

Glue the streamers down and reinforce them with pieces of tape.

Next, tape the windsock together and thread a pipe cleaner through the two holes at its top. Twist the pipe cleaner ends together, and you’re done!

My son thought his wind sock was pretty cool.

Bubble painting looked like fun!

After mixing the bubble solution with red watercolor paint, my son blew bubbles onto a piece of paper.

Then I blew bubbles into the solution itself as he placed a piece of paper over the top of the bowl. My son really enjoyed watching the bubbles from below, through the tupperware.

The final activity asks children what they enjoy doing on windy days. Children draw in their answers and/or answer in words, as appropriate.

My son drew pictures of himself reading a book and riding a train. These are his favorite things to do on any day, truth be told.

Ivy Kids is great! Of all the subscription boxes I’ve seen, Ivy Kids has the largest number of developmentally appropriate, engaging, practical activities for children to complete. The activities are well thought out and fun, and could easily take a month to complete.  The curation around a central theme was a real win for us. I think this box has helped to reinforce a lot of what he already knew while also introducing him to new facts about wind. It would certainly be a great subscription for homeschoolers, though anyone would be lucky to have so much fun playing, making art and learning about wind. I can’t wait to see what they send out next month!

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