September 2016 Little Thinker Box Subscription Box Review

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Little Thinker Box by Kidable Adventures is a preschool subscription box for ages 3-6. The Little Thinker Box includes four components: Read, Create, Explore and Learn. The Learn component is divided into three different levels: Head Start, PreK and Kindergarten. Choose the level that’s right for your child!

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The September theme was Cookie Shop. Cool!

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The box is always packed in a really neat manner – the tissue makes for a nice presentation, and the lesson segments are explained well. The attached outline makes it easy to organize the big picture of what you’ll cover each month: reading, creating, exploring and learning.

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By breaking up the theme into four components, Little Thinker Box makes its lessons really accessible and down-to-earth. You could easily do a component per week, or you could work through all of the activities on a rainy weekend.

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All the actual instructions plus the parental guidance is included, along with all the supplies! The Read, Create, Explore, and Learn format was designed based on customer and expert feedback. I like the bit of structure it lends to the boxes – the numerous activities are more manageable conceptualized in smaller bites.

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This month, each component arrived in a separate bag. I really liked this! It made it really easy to pick and choose what we were going to do next from among the many activities included in the box.

Read

My son and I both enjoyed reading “May I Please Have a Cookie?” by Jennifer E. Morris ($3.69). The plot is certainly one my son is familiar with! Alfie the alligator really wants a cookie, and he comes up with a number of schemes to try to get one. Each time he’s thwarted until, finally, he says the magic words to his mother. While this book would be a great tool to teach younger children how to ask politely for what they want, older children will be amused by the lengths that Alfie will go to to get cookies before realizing all he really had to do was ask nicely.

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I love how the folks behind Little Thinker Box include questions to ask once you’ve finished reading the book with your child! The questions are always listed on the information card. While my son enjoyed answering the questions, I appreciated how they reinforced what he had read.

Create

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This month’s create component asked children to decorate an array of cookies using markers, crayons, glitter glue and gem stickers.

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My son decorated about ten cookies and decided it was time to move on. I’m certain he’ll revisit this activity as the month progresses.

Explore

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The Explore segment is always the heart and soul of this box for us. It encourages creative play.  This month, my son got to pretend he owned a cookie shop!

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Every cookie shop needs an attractive welcome sign. My son got to work decorating his with the enclosed stickers.

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Next, he decided upon the menu. He decided to sell chocolate chip cookies for $2 each and imaginary cookies for $2.50 each.

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To aid in baking, my son constructed three baking sheets.

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Since packaging is everything, he took the time to decorate take-home boxes as well.

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After organizing his store, he was ready for his first shopper!

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My husband ordered four imaginary cookies for $10. My son enjoyed the challenge of calculating the cost of the cookies.

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Once my husband had paid for his imaginary cookies, my son put his cookies in a box and handed the box to my husband. How fun!

Learn

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The Learn segment brings some additional structure to the theme, focusing the kids on school-style activities.  (Although it had been a workbook, due to parent requests, the founder changed the workbook format to a mixture of worksheets and activities.) It’s a great tool for focusing the fun in a way that translates well to a more formal academic setting.

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The activities in the box range in difficulty from Headstart to PreK to Kindergarten, so children can pick and choose which activities are best suited to their own developmental needs.

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Whereas originally my son had been doing all of the activities for the sake of the review, over the past few months, he’s been more interested in completing the kindergarten level activities exclusively. To keep it fun for him, that’s what we’ll continue to do. For those who are interested in what the other activities entail, I’ve taken pictures of the activity lists.

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My son loved how the cookie store theme tied in with his activities this month (cookies make everything fun)!

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The first activity asks students to calculate the cost of cookies.

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As this is only the second time my son has used play money (he has just started to learn how to play Monopoly), he was excited by these activities!

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The next activity asked my son to count out 20 cookies.

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The last activity asked students to solve basic addition and subtraction questions using chocolate chip cookies as answer choices. My son enjoyed this very much.

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Both of my kids devoured these chocolate chip Snackimals cookies within minutes. I did get to try one of them, and I enjoyed it very much.

My son and I really enjoy exploring and learning together with the Little Thinker Box every month! It keeps my preschooler engaged and thinking the whole time we work through the four components.  I liked this month’s emphasis on pretend play and how easy it was to introduce my son to the notion of decimals while playing cookie shop. We can’t wait to see what they send out next month!

Visit Little Thinker Box to find out more or to subscribe!

The Subscription: Little Thinker Box
The Description: Monthly subscription service for children preparing to enter Pre-K or Kindergarten. Each month the child is sent a themed-based activity box that focuses on reading, writing, math, science, and other skills; using fun games, crafts, and experiments. Each month’s theme is a surprise!
The Price: $29.99 per month

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