February Appleseed Lane Review + Coupon – My Daughter LOVES Professor Caterpillar!

I set out the Appleseed Lane box that arrived last week for a Valentine’s Day surprise! My daughter was so pleased and got me out of bed so we could do “Professor Caterpillar” (the character that guides the kids through the science activities) right away. But first she took my camera so she could take a photo of the box!

She is wild about it! And I was pretty impressed with her photograph. This month’s box was pretty advanced and we absolutely loved working through the projects together. Here are the reasons why we are just adoring Appleseed Lane right now:

• Monthly Theme – everyone gets the same new box
• Science with a little crafting thrown in, instead of the other way around
• Great child-friendly graphics!
• Really arresting themes
• Actual learning occurs

February 2014 Appleseed Lane – Journey Into Space

The Appleseed Lane information card makes what’s inside pretty easy to understand – There’s a theme (and Professor Caterpillar is in a space suit) and 4 projects.

The back of the front card has all the instructions for all the activities. For most kids, this is a box that requires parental involvement, and that’s a good thing. I got the chance to teach her everything I know about space. Which is actually a lot. Ok, I didn’t teach her everything but she acquired a ton of knowledge!

The kids cannot keep their hands off the stuff while I take pictures. There were plenty of materials for 4 activities. The information card also has an extension activity – a balloon-powered rocket, that we have yet to complete, but we will be doing sometime this week.

Each Appleseed Lane box comes with a completion sticker, which obviously must be added to the chart before we finish.

“Scope It Out” – This project involved decorating a paper telescope with metallic paper and foam stickers. The kids took turns applying stickers and my daughter colored the sliding part with markers. We have this (and the star chart) set aside for later this week when the weather is nicer for a nighttime excursion.

“Star Struck” – My daughter is super interested in constellations, like most young children, and we assembled this from two sheets of cardstock and a really cute star shaped brad. She couldn’t set it up herself but it helped her understand (we’ve been changing it to show what the sky looks like at different times of night) that the visible stars are different every day and every time of day. She was really excited about this whole box and showed her star chart off to dad on FaceTime.

“Space Race” – This was a couple different activities. Instead of a book this month, the kids got a really amazing solar system map. If you are a subscriber I strongly encourage you to hang this up in the hallway where they can examine it. I’m not up on what standards we’re using this year, but I can assure you (having taught earth/space science) that children need to know the names of the planets, their characteristics, and their order. Introducing kids to these concepts while they are young is so vitally important, and I am so pleased that my kids are getting exposure to scientific concepts so early. Love Appleseed Lane.

My daughter just ate this up. She used the map to help her place the stickers on the sheet.

After we’d gone over the map, we prepared the Space Race game. Some questions were too tough for her (for reference, she turned 5 two months ago), but she was able to solve most of them. We hung her solar system chart in the hallway and she ran back and forth when questions required her to know what order the planets were in, or how close to the sun they were. She was totally into this and her dad quizzed her on her knowledge too.

“Moon Phases” – This is just one shot of our extensive exploration of moon phases 🙂 A demonstration so small can be so engaging to a child, and the concepts really sink in. I had her pretend she was the earth and rotate around so she understand how the moon is lit up with different positions.

I thought this was a great box! As I mentioned, it did require heavy parental involvement, and I totally enjoyed doing the box along with her. Instead of spending my time putting all the activities together, we got to spend our time on science! My only criticism of this month’s box is that she missed the Professor Caterpillar storyline a little bit – but I’m pretty sure he’ll be back next month.

Visit Appleseed Lane to sign up! You must join by February 20 to get the next box – “Sound & Music.” Use code FRIEND10 and put my name (Brandy O’Grady) in the comments section during checkout to save $10 on your first box.

Check out all my Appleseed Lane Reviews! Don’t forget to take a look at other Subscription Boxes for Kids.