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 in the 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. 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.
balancing seesaw. This activity was relatively simple to assemble, although I did the assembly. You can balance the beads on the seesaw and move them back and forth to discover how to balance at different lever lengths and with different objects.
The stacking crayons included for the next activity could be used as well. This was fun, and our 6 year old was very intrigued by it. I am hoping to see something lever-based in the regular Kiwi Crate, just because of her level of interest! Our son did not finish his cheesy roll-up so he could continue playing with the see-saw, so I would say that he was highly interested!
jigsaw puzzle. This was my son’s favorite activity. He didn’t love the stacking crayons – they are unusual and I’m not sure he really got them (they are easy to hold, I tried it out). He did a big scribble in blue, and then got very interested in coloring each item neatly. He got frustrated that there was no brown for the tree, or grey for Kellan the Koala, so we got out some markers for him. The scene on the puzzle tied in with the next activity, but I wondered if it should have been simpler due to the 4 colors of crayons (or just know that you might need more colors – we have 3 tubs of them so…).
He assembled and disassembled the puzzle repeatedly!
chalk games. The final activity in the box was a variety of chalk games, which looked like a lot of fun, but it rained all day. We’re going to save these for another time but the way this weather is looking that may not be until spring!
I love that they spelled out different games because otherwise I would be all “go play with this chalk” and someone would inevitably eat it!
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. Although my son is almost 5 this is the member of the KiwiCo family he feels most comfortable with.
Visit Koala Crate to subscribe or find out more! Use this link to save 30% on your first box! (or Kiwi Crate and the KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker Crate and Doodle Crate).
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