Koala-T Time: Life Lessons in a Box is a monthly subscription for busy families that encourages quality family time through meaningful, short character building exercises. Boxes are best suited for 5-8-year-olds and their parents – $25 each month. The cost goes down with longer prepaid subscriptions. Shipping is free for 6 or 12 month long commitments.
Each of the four weekly exercises is designed to take no longer than 15 minutes to complete.
In addition to the four weekly themes, each box contains everything you’ll need for one special Koala-T Time.
Each of the boxes arrives with its activities grouped into well-labeled, easily manageable packets.
My son and I couldn’t wait to dig in and explore these activities together!
Koala-T Time recommends completing one short activity per week, preferably on the same day of the week. To help you plan, they’ve included a compact calendar. My son and I prefer winging it, but I’ll look forward to having this on my refrigerator to help me plan family vacations with my mom while I’m on the phone.
Since this was our first box from Koala-T Time, we received this introductory note along with our box. It provided a nice overview of the box and its contents.
The theme for the first week was honesty. My son and I enjoyed chatting about the importance of honesty and completing the enclosed tasks.
My son enjoyed filling out and reading the Mad Libs-type story, and he also enjoyed learning how locks work.
Overall, though, I thought the “truth is like using the right combination to open a combination lock” idea was a bit abstract for my almost five year old son, but he enjoyed the activities very much. After these activities, we read “The Boy Who Called Wolf” and chatted about it to further our discussion of the importance of honesty.
For our next lesson, we talked about being a hero. I thought this lesson was very successful.
In this lesson, children place a stamp on each instance in a picture where they see someone helping someone else.
Every time my son placed a stamp on the card, we talked about what was happening in the picture and how someone was being a hero for someone else.
Shortly after he was through, my daughter fell and hurt herself, and I asked my son “how could you be a hero for your sister right now?” He immediately ran over to comfort her, offering her a hug and kiss, and she was instantly better. This lesson was a winner for us!
In the trust component, you offer a sheet of paper to your child and tell your child that if he or she follows your directions, the paper will turn into a koala’s face.
Although he was a little skeptical at first, my son played along.
He very much enjoyed his first attempt at origami.
I played along too, so we ended up with two adorable koala bears. Fun!
I appreciated Koala-T Time’s advice to remind my son of the “paper koala” any time that he questions my plans; even though he may not know what lies in store, he’ll probably enjoy the end result!
The final activity helps solidify a sense of achievement in children.
In this very simple game, children pick up a card of their choosing and follow its directions. They’re sure to figure out pretty quickly that the green cards will help them get where they want to go, but the red cards will set them back. My son enjoyed playing this game very much.
For this month’s special Koala-T Time, we visited a park we had never been to before. Needless to say, this was a huge hit for my kids!
We chose to visit the Play for All Abilities Park in Round Rock, Texas. I’ve been wanting to check it out for years, and this was clearly our chance!
When we arrived, we completed the Koala-T Time activities outside the playground area. First up: capture the flag. My son and husband both hid a flag and searched until they found the other person’s flag. After about 10 minutes of searching (they both hid their flags really well!), I had to narrow the search area for both of them. They both thought this game was really fun.
Next, my son practiced the jump rope. Although he can’t do it fluidly yet, he was able to get it over his head and walk over it. Fun!
Next, he and I played hopscotch. This was his first time playing, and he was really good at it! Clearly we’ll have to play again once we get back home.
Once we finished the activities for the box, the kids played in the playground for a couple of hours. They were thrilled!
Overall, we had a lot of fun with our first box from Koala-T Time. I appreciated how succinct the lessons were (they could easily be completed as part of a bedtime routine), and my kids had a lot of fun completing the activities. Spending time together at a new-to-us park was an added bonus (sometimes it takes a little extra nudge to get me to go someplace new, and I was delighted that Koala-T Time provided that to me).
Have you subscribed to Koala-T Time yet? What do you enjoy most about this subscription?
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