The Preschool Box October 2016 Subscription Box Review – Box 1

The Preschool Box is a monthly subscription for three and four-year-olds that teaches basic math, phonics and writing skills so that students will find success in elementary school. It’s an ideal subscription for young children who are not enrolled in a formal preschool. Boxes cost $29.95 each month plus an additional $3.95 for shipping.

Each box arrives with a lot of guidance for adult helpers. I liked this note that appears front and center on the inside of the box. It instructs you to find the Parent Guide Brochure, which is key to organizing the lessons in the box.

The box arrives neatly packed with lots of colorful items that are sure to engage young learners everywhere.

I love how the front of the Parent Guide Brochure outlines the learning objectives for the box! In my case, when I looked at the cover, I realized that while this box is probably going to be a bit too advanced for my almost 2-year-old, my 4-year-old has already mastered these learning objectives. I decided to complete the box with my young daughter knowing that there would be activities in this box that she couldn’t do. My hope, however, was that by attempting at least some of the exercises in this box, my daughter would learn her numbers and letters (she already knows roughly 10 colors).

The Parental Guide Brochure divides the activities in the Preschool Box into four weeks worth of activities. Each week focuses on a new letter while also offering a variety of activities related to numbers and color sorting.

The activities build in complexity week to week. Reading over the Parent Guide, I was especially impressed by the emphasis on fine motor skills in these activities. I knew there would be activities that my daughter could not possibly complete due to fine motor limitations that would be perfect for my four-and-a-half-year-old (cutting in circles, for instance).

In addition to providing a broad range of activities each month, The Preschool Box includes a book with each of their monthly shipments. This month’s Alphabet Book ($9.12) was perfect for my daughter! She loved looking at the clear pictures while I spoke and sang the alphabet to her!

Ever since we’ve received this box, my daughter has loved studying the alphabet cards in it!

She’s so young that many of these words were new to her. She has loved learning to pronounce the items depicted on the reverse of the letter cards and begs me to play letter cards with her!

She very much enjoyed gluing the enclosed squares to her letter A to make an alligator head! This was her first time gluing, and she thought it was a lot of fun.

Watch out!

My daughter loves colors, so I knew this activity would be right up her alley. The Preschool Box begins by asking kids to sort reds from blues. Then they progress to sorting yellows from greens. Finally, they sort all four colors. To better understand sorting, though, I started out just providing her with reds and blues to sort. Later, I gave her items of different colors (including silver, purple, pink, etc.) and asked her to give me whatever we weren’t sorting on our sheet.

Sorting is fun!

More sorting fun!

I thought this activity was brilliant. Here, children affix velcro dots to cards with various numbers on the reverse. The card with a 0 gets 0 dots. The card with a 1 gets 1 dot, etc.

My daughter loved making these cards and playing with them too! She has spent so much time with these cards, that she can now look at the number of dots and announce the number on the reverse. Equally exciting, I’m pleased to say that today, for the first time, thanks in no small part to these activities in The Preschool Box, my daughter counted to 10! Wow!

Just as the sorting activities develop over time, so the number activities too. In this activity, students put the corresponding number of beans into the designated cup. My daughter enjoyed this very much!

My daughter also used the beans to construct the letter B.

She isn’t ready yet to actually practice tracing letters, but she enjoyed coloring all the tracing sheets with a pencil. Tracing sheets were provided for each letter.

Another week means more fun with letters!

My daughter enjoyed telling me what all of the pictures were at the bottom of the C sheet.

I thought this was a fantastic activity for four-year-olds! Here, students color in the cookies, cut them out and place them on a cookie jar sheet.

As this was my daughter’s first time using scissors, I helped her make random cuts in the sheet. I was impressed, though, that she was using her own hand muscles to make the cuts. When my son was little, I had a number of different progressively more advanced scissors for him to use. I’ve lost them all. After doing this activity, I decided to go out and get some more for my daughter, beginning with Faber-Castell’s My First Scissors.

Since cutting in circles is such a great activity, I asked my son to come “help out” by cutting out the circles for his sister.

He and his sister both enjoyed placing them in the cookie jar.

Building on the numeracy goals of this box, students were asked to glue sequins to pictures of gumball machines according to the number on the bottom of the gumball machine.

By the third week, the included sequins had become well loved, and we didn’t have enough left over for this activity. We opted instead to use sticky jewels. My daughter thought this was great!

The next activity asks children to “write” numbers and make the corresponding number of balls with play dough. Both my son and daughter got involved in this – another great fine motor activity!

Even though we’ve been at these activities for a few weeks now, my daughter begs me every day to “play” The Preschool Box. She just can’t get enough of learning and playing with her letters and numbers!

This activity was her first exposure to water colors. She instantly became a big fan.

She also enjoyed the added challenge of sorting into quadrants.

The final number activity asks students to trace, write and draw their own depiction of the first five positive whole numbers. Since my daughter doesn’t yet have the fine motor skills to complete this activity, we’ll save it for when she’s older.

My daughter and I had a blast working through our first Preschool Box! Although she’s still too young to complete many of the activities as intended, she loved her box, and I was glad we worked through it together. In terms of fine motor skills, it really is suited best for children aged 3-4. My son, for instance, always benefits from making things with playdough and cutting in circles. But my daughter still got a lot out of the box! Thanks to her hard work and this box’s thoughtful curation, she now knows A-D and 0-5, which is fantastic! I’d highly recommend this box for any young children who are learning their letters, numbers or colors.

Have you tried The Preschool Box yet? Which activities did your kids enjoy best?

Visit The Preschool Box to subscribe or find out more!