Koala Crate Preschool Subscription Box Review & Coupon –

Watch out! For August, Koala Crate is bringing the reptiles to town!  Koala Crate is a monthly subscription box from KiwiCo for preschoolers ages 3 to 4. Koala Crate was created to encourage hands-on learning and fun. Activities are designed to be developmentally appropriate and enriching while also engaging, fun, and universally appealing.

A Koala Crate box comes with a variety of supplies to create a project, perform activities, and fun games, all geared for preschool.  Because the box is targeted to a younger audience than the other boxes in the Kiwi family, parts are usually self-adhesive and pre-cut or scored.

There are two books that will come in your Koala Crate.  Imagine! magazine is “a play and learn magazine” made for you and your preschooler to explore together. My son loves it!  I like that the instruction booklet is separate from imagine!, so you can preview the activity while your child works on the activities int he booklet.

There’s a fun story to help introduce your child to the theme of the box.  The same group of friendly characters is featured each month, and the familiar faces encourage engagement.  We get the box for our four year old, but our six year old usually helps him read through the story, so it’s fun for everyone! The activities are a little more difficult and there are more critical thinking activities in the magazine than there were when the box started.  The level seems appropriate for the target audience of 3 to 4 year olds.  Some help is needed with reading the story and the instructions for each activity, but our four year old can complete the activities unassisted.

The activities are geared to preschool kids, with lots of finds, matching, and counting activities. 

This page shows the versatility of each activity and the ability tot tailor to kids at different learning levels — here, kids can play a simple spot-the-lizard game, practice counting, letter recognition, and general habitat exploration.
Counting, color and pattern recognition, and other basic skills and insights are emphasized.  The hidden pictures page is one of our favs!

Our four year old has fun doing the puzzles, and our 6 year old helps him with the reading parts! Our son completes Imagine! cover-to-cover.  It is replete with picture finds, spot the difference, mazes, and similar games geared to pre and early readers.

The second booklet is the instructions & inspiration book. This gives an overview of all the items in the crate, the 3 primary activities, and the messiness level and required grownup assistance needed. Every activity tells you the required materials, engagement questions to ask your child, step by step instructions, and play ideas.  Even though most crafts are self-explanatory, they have helpful illustrations and clear instructions, so it’s hard to go wrong.

stuffed snake friend.  This is like the traditional sock snake, but Koala Crate has made it easy by replacing sewing and buttons with safe and easy to apply felt scales and eyes.  The “sock” itself is custom-sewn felt, made especially for this activity.

No snake is complete without a tongue.  A silly, noise-making tongue.

The adhesive felt was so simple to use.  It was great — after a little help stuffing the batting in evenly, the kids were able to complete the craft without any further assistance.

color changing chameleon. The crafting portion is extremely simple, just applying eyes and assembling the targets.  The kids got a kick out of the color-change and the target game.

The chameleon itself is kind of fun to play with.  It would REALLY be a hoot if you happened to have pink wallpaper with little purple, yellow, green, and blue eggs on it.

The targeting game was fun.  You can use it as a way to talk about the food chain and other zoological topics, but mostly its an excuse to blow on the party horn.

turtle box. The turtle box is a keepsake box the kids can decorate like a turtle shell.  It even has a hide-able googly-eyed turtle hidden underneath!

The kids named him “Hexy”.

Hexy folds under his shell, making a fine felt-bottomed keepsake box when he is hiding.  

When tongueless, the snake has no hard pieces, so he can hang around as a tiny, coiled throw pillow.

This box made good use of the provided materials, using the felt hexagons for both the snake and the keepsake box.  The noise-maker was similarly used for both the chameleon and the snake (note:  these items are grouped with the other supplies in the photos, so they each appear more than once — there is only one sheet of each color hex and once noisemaker provided).

The kids really liked this edition of Koala Crate (they always do, but this one was particularly great), because the finished products were fun to drag around and annoy each other with!  In addition to being a keepsake box, the turtle was also fun to play with — and my daughter made use drag the snake around town the next day!

Koala Crate is the member of  the KiwiCo family geared toward the youngest audience.  It is great for preschoolers, as it relies heavily on shape, color, and pattern recognition and other pre-reading skills.  The kids can enjoy a craft element, a game, and several fun activities in the Imagine! booklet.

Visit Koala Crate to subscribe or find out more!  Use code MS30 to save 30% on your first box!