Koala Crate Review & Coupon – Arctic Box

My kids had a blast with the December Koala Crate! 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.  The activities are designed to be developmentally appropriate and enriching while also engaging, fun, and universally appealing.

This month’s Koala Crate theme was Arctic!  Like every Koala Crate, this 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 difficulty level of the imagine! activities 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. There is a comic and a coloring page. We’ve been encouraging our child to color more, as it assists in pre-writing skills.


 Our five year old loves doing the puzzles, and he completes Imagine! cover-to-cover.   A recent format change had replaced nearly all the games and puzzles with storytelling and play-acting activities.  

This month, it appears some of the traditional activities (tracing, matching, picture finds, and word recognition) have found their way back into the magazine.  The booklet ends, as the Kiwi Crate’s magazine usually does, with a a do-it-yourself craft (this month was salt dough ornaments). We think the activities will be changing monthly depending on the theme and crafts.

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.  The activities all relate to the same central theme, but they each tend to encourage different types play and help develop different skills.

polar bear dress up

The dress up craft required a bit of lacing, or rudimentary sewing.  The felt was pre-cut to the correct shape and had holes already punched for the laces.  He was excited to try it!

The paw and claw shaped decorations were pre-cut and self-adhesive.  The instructions had clear illustrations, so our five year old was able to attach them in the correct orientation unassisted.

An adorable set of ears completes the outfit.  The kids had a ball with the costume, chasing each other around the house.

snowball toss

The snowball toss has the kids create two kinds of snowballs — the ping pong ball sticks to the bear paws, making it a good starter snoball.  The larger ball is made of soft yarn wrapped around a shower poof (plastic mesh loofah).  Its  a bit trickier, but its very soft.

I enjoyed seeing the kids work through the best way to toss and catch.  They independently developed baseball’s single glove paradigm, finding the most efficient way to both catch and throw.

sparkly snowflake stamp

The final activity was constructing a snowflake poster using a stamp.  Some of the soft yarn that was used in the snowball craft was reserved to stuff the inside of the snowflake (you sew it on with a large plastic needle).

An ink pad was included — it was large enough to allow coverage of the snowflake with a couple good presses.

The rich blue paper provided made a wonderful sky backdrop for the flakes.  Our son loved the poster so much that he insisted we hang it on his door, and it covers half of 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 5 and enjoys many of the Kiwi Crate activities, but Koala Crate is still the member of the KiwiCo family with which he feels most comfortable.

Visit Koala Crate to subscribe or find out more!  Use code MS30 to save 30% on your first box!  (or Kiwi Crate  and the KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker Crate and Doodle Crate).