Koala Crate is a monthly subscription box from KiwiCo for preschoolers ages 3 to 5. It is educational and always hands-on. The activities are designed to be developmentally appropriate and enriching while also keeping it engaging, fun, and universally-appealing.
This month’s Koala Crate theme was MUSIC! As always, the box comes with all the supplies needed to create a trio of fun, age-appropriate crafts – plus it has a magazine with extra games and activities.
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 the magazine, so you can preview the activity while your child works on the activities in the booklet.
Imagine! magazine contains information relevant to the theme so your child learns a bit about the topic while having fun with the craft and play activities. The information is provided in an age-appropriate format.
DEAL: Use this link to save 30% on your first month of Koala Crate! (or any of the KiwiCo family subscriptions – use this page to find the best box for your little one!).
A fun story introduces your child to the theme of the box. The same group of friendly characters is featured each month, and the familiar faces encourage engagement.
Your kids will always learn a little bit about the top beyond the projects, as imagine! provides some background – at least enough to provide some context and tie the cartoon in with the projects. In addition to the main projects, there are several games and activities in imagine! magazine.
Activities usually include tracing, matching, picture finds, or word recognition games. The book also includes instructions for some extension activities you can do at home with commonplace household items.
The instruction booklet is intended for the adult helper and gives detailed instructions for the activity.
It lists all the supplies, the 3 primary activities, the messiness level, and any grownup assistance needed.
Every activity tells you the required materials, engagement questions to ask your child, step by step instructions, and play ideas. Though most crafts are self-explanatory, they have helpful illustrations and clear instructions, so it’s hard to go wrong.
This Crate is a good example of how Koala Crate treats a theme. They build multiple activities around it, giving your child lots to do while remaining immersed in the topic. It makes it easy for caregivers to transition the child from one activity to the next without interruption, but it also creates break points for spreading the Crate across a few crafting sessions. When you are done crafting, your child has always learned something and has fun stuff to play with.
All the materials you’ll need to make this month’s activities! The activities in a box usually all relate to the same central theme, but they each tend to encourage different types of play and help develop different skills.
Our first project was building a xylophone!
My son isn’t yet 3, but he was able to decorate the xylophone and play it (surprisingly well!). I helped with the construction.
He got really into it!
Composition sheets were included, too. We used the colored stamps to compose our own music. Your own musical language depends on which color you assigned to each plank or key of the xylophone.
The second project was creating a koala tambourine. We threaded bells onto the wooden cutout using an elastic band. The koala had pre-cut holes, and the band had fasteners on each end, so it was easy to attach.
As is typical with Koala Crate projects, everyone wants to get in on the fun!
The third project was constructing a rhythm ribbon. We started by decorating the silky ribbon with our stamps.
All it needed after that was to attach a mallet to the end (they sent three, so we didn’t have to use one of the xylophone mallets).
Ready for the Olympics! This crate was really engaging, because even my youngest intuitively knew what to do with the xylophone. The tone was actually very good – it wasn’t too loud and sounded very musical. The kids pulled the xylophone out frequently over the next several days, and I even caught my nine year old playing with it!
Koala Crate is great for preschoolers, as it relies heavily on shape, color, and pattern recognition and other pre-reading skills. There is always some age-appropriate learning, and it really keeps the kids busy. You can do the activities in a single marathon session, but they are also easy to spread out over several days. All of the boxes in the KiwiCo family are excellent parent, babysitter or grandparent activity boxes, perfect for adding some structure and fun to quality time with the kids, without any pre-planning hassle.
Our almost 3 year old needs some help figuring out what to do, but he can actually do many of the activities without help. Our other son is 6 now and has transitioned to the older boxes, but he still really enjoys Koala, because he can do the activities himself.
Have you tried Koala Crate? What did you think of this month’s theme?
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