Kiwi Crate Review & Coupon – HYDRAULICS

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Kiwi Crate is a kids’ craft and activity subscription that comes with everything you need to complete a great project or two, usually a pair of crafts that can be used as toys or playtime props. The box is geared for ages 5-8, and the projects are always age-appropriate, though some require more parental assistance than others.

Kiwi Crate is the most popular craft and activity subscription box for kids!

This month’s theme is HYDRAULICS! Kiwi Crate includes all necessary supplies for the featured activities, plus explore! magazine.

DEAL: Use this link to save 30% on your first box of Kiwi Crate! (or KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker CrateKoala Crate, Atlas Crate, Cricket Crate, and Doodle Crate).

Explore! Magazine

An issue of explore magazine is included in every Crate. It is full of fun content that brings the project to life. explore! has read, draw, learn, explore, eat, and make designated activities. There is really a lot to look at and read – a comic, puzzles, and games – and it really extends your young one’s engagement with the Crate. Each expands on the theme of the box, whether through factoids, drawing activities, or recipes, but the variation is helpful for engaging different learning styles and interests.

There is always a comic featuring Steve the Kiwi and his pals.

They also include lots of historical and scientific information relating to the current theme.

There’s a suggested activity about creating your own water-powered monster using a small box, colored paper, scissors, water, pen, and some common household items.

Cranes, presses, and even a simple water gun are some of the common equipment/materials that uses hydraulics to be operated.

Kiwi Crate Crafts

The second booklet that comes in every crate is the actual instruction booklet for the crafts, and it often includes additional activities beyond the extension projects included in explore!

Every Kiwi Crate comes with a unique Steve sticker (like your merit badge for completing the box). The first box of an annual subscription includes a poster for displaying your earned stickers.

The booklet contains a list of all supplies they provided for the crafts. It also has a rating of messiness and parental involvement for each activity.

Here’s everything we need for all three experiments: Hydraulic System, Water-Powered Inchworm, and Mystery Color Mechanism.

The first featured experiment in the booklet is the Hydraulic System!

To perform the activity, you’ll need two pairs of syringes and a pair of tubes.

We connected the two syringes using the tubes. The kids pressed the syringe filled with water and they saw how the water travels inside the tube and put pressure on the other syringe to move!

Since water can’t be squished, it has to move. So when you press down on one syringe in your hydraulic system, the water moves and pushes the other syringe up.

For the Water-Powered Inchworm activity, we’ll be needing a rubber band, rubber rings, pipe cleaner, bead, dowels, large and small syringe holder, plus the completed hydraulic system.

This craft is divided into two parts, the first part is to create your inchworm and the other part is building your own track.

Building the track was easy because of this detailed step-by-step procedure from the booklet. The illustration provides a huge boost, as it gives a visual sample of how the track should look like.

This is how the water-powered inchworm with track looks like once fully assembled.

Here’s a closer look of the worm crawling in the track. The pipe cleaner looks like a caterpillar especially when bent, while the bead serves as the head,

The two elastic bands work as a limiter, as it controls the worm’s movement so it would stay in track all the time.

The worm moves as the syringe is being pumped, the speed of the crawling depends on the pressure being applied to the syringe.

The final activity is the Mystery Color Mechanism, and like the second activity, we will also be using the hydraulic system to complete this one.

Aside from the hydraulic system, we’ll also be using a frame, a clear and paper pictures, brads, stand, color pencil, foam marshmallow, blue pipe cleaner, and double-sided and gray sticky foam.

Inside the frame is a colorless picture of two fishes facing each other.

The mystery starts once the picture slowly pops out of the frame, it becomes colorful!

The trick here is in the frame. First thing to do is to color the paper picture using the markers, and attach it together with the clear picture. Put the other end of the syringe at the back of the paper picture and insert them on the frame. Make sure that only the clear picture goes inside the frame.

As the syringe is being pumped, the card containing the picture will slowly be going up and outside the frame to combine with the paper picture, which is the one with color. And as we pull the other end of the syringe, only the clear picture will slowly be going inside the frame and the colored picture will also be going down but would be staying at the back of the frame, making it as if the color disappeared. Pretty tricky!

Extension Activities

Every Crate includes extension activities, and for this crate, they included a plastic cup squirter!

All we need is a pair of plastic cups, bendy straw, scissors, clay, water, and markers. This activity is aimed to create a squirt gun using these household items. Amazing!

The booklet even introduced a fun recipe for a frozen yogurt drops. They also encourage your kids to email a letter or picture to Steve, and if it is published, they’ll be sending you a plush kiwi!

Once again, Kiwi Crate amazed us with a lot of fun and exciting projects that captured my kids’ interests. They introduce my kids to various scientific concepts while mixing them with arts and crafts. My kids really enjoyed everything inside the box, especially the water-powered inchworm. They really worked hard to finish it and make the worm move. Seeing them very happy doing the activities while learning different stuff is truly priceless. I can say that this crate works on all ages, because even I learned something while watching my kids enjoy each and every activity. This is definitely a great activity box for fun and learning!

Did you enjoy this months activity? Let us know in the comments!

Visit Kiwi Crate to subscribe or to find out more about this fantastic kids’ craft subscription box!

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