Atlas Crate is a monthly subscription from KiwiCo that specializes in geography and culture for children between ages 6 to 11 years old. This box is designed to spark kids’ sense of adventure and curiosity, inspiring them to see themselves as citizens of the world. Kids can see and connect with the rest of the world, helping them grow beyond their own experience as they explore the globe.
KiwiCo also offers Kiwi Crate, Koala Crate, Doodle Crate, Tinker Crate, Tadpole Crate, and Eureka Crate. Atlas Crate is a great addition to the KiwiCo family as geography and exploration is always a favorite activity!
DEAL: Save 30% on your first month with this link on any KiwiCo line, no coupon code required!
This month’s box is all about ITALY!
Upon opening, we are welcomed by the cards and pamphlets that are essential to the activities. This subscription emphasizes learning through creative play as they provide in this box everything the kids might need. It builds a sense of adventure, an appreciation of other cultures, builds a sense of global citizenship and opportunity for parents and grandparents to bond with children.
Everything in the crate!
Ciao!
The envelope has a string closure.
Voila! Every flap of the envelope has information about the box. We are also given a beautiful surprise of trivia cards filled with fascinating facts and photos.
We are finally introduced to our new Adventure tandem Anya the cricket and Milo the sandpiper.
There’s a card that lists all six tasks we need to accomplish in this crate.
You can explore more online after you get your box with additional activities and book suggestions! Atlas Crate recommends Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer and Stone Giant: Michelangelo’s David and How He Came to Be.
Atlas Crate Adventure Book
Missed our first review? You’ll get the rings in your first box, which will always start with the WORLD crate. Check out that review here!
The first thing we got is a sticker of the featured country in this crate. It shows the famous landmark in Italy, the Colosseum.
We placed the sticker on the front page of the Adventure Book.
Four countries down, a lot more to go!
The table of contents is on the edge of the page for easy reading, just like how a travel book works.
It’s a cute illustration of the country map with fast facts and where they have images drawn of Italy’s notable events, sports, places, or products from that particular location.
As an Atlas Crate ritual, the kids located the beautiful country on our world map. There it is!
These pages feature the start of the adventures of Anya and Milo in Italy.
They take us with them in their adventure through reading their journal as they explore the beautiful country and share with us their activities.
And they also visited the popular canals of Venice!
Atlas Crate Activities
The first activity that the crate teaches us about is Rota. It is a game like tic-tac-toe, where one needs to be the first to get three in a row. The player can win with 3 pieces going straight across the circle, or curved along the edge.
You’ll just need a piece of paper and a pen to play the game. Another activity that the kit tells us about is soap carving, which is a form of art that Renaissance sculptors developed.
Atlas Crate Recipe
For this crate’s recipe, the crate teaches us to make some delicious Bruschetta!
Bruschetta is an antipasto from Italy consisting of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with olive oil and salt. Variations may include toppings of tomato, vegetables, beans, cured meat, or cheese.
We’ll need some baguette slices, olive oil, tomatoes, basil, garlic, and salt.
The first thing that we need to do is to toast the baguette slices until they are golden brown.
Then, we rub the surfaces of the bread with garlic, then we put the tomato and basil mixture on top.
Our lovely Bruschetta is ready to serve and delight our guests!
Atlas Crate Projects
They provided 2 different booklets for the activities.
Spinning Pizzeria Automaton Here are the different parts of that will make up the Pizzeria!
The activity booklet also tells us about PIZZA! Yum!
The booklet provided easy to follow instructions and illustrations for the project.
The kids started to build the Pizzeria!
There are also moving parts that we need to build to make the pizzeria look real!
My son cannot be disturbed as he tries to complete this piece! Looks tricky, but he’s got it!
The pizzeria’s almost done! It’s fun and we can’t wait to make it work!
To get this thing “cooking,” we just need to attach the paper bricks and the air dry clay, to make it look like it’s cooking something up!
It really looks nice, with all the pizza-tossing machinery and brick oven with fire!
By turning the axle, it spins the pizza and fires up the oven at the same time!
You know something’s cooking when you see smoke, as portrayed by the cotton ball on top of the pizzeria!
Here’s the Pizzeria in action, and we can see that as my son turns the axle, it spins the pizza dough while turning up the fire on the brick oven! Amazing!
Calco Painting The next activity we have is learning about the Calco tracing method to create pictures for painting!
We are going to use carbon paper which was invented by Pellegrino Turri in the early 1800s.
From this activity, the kit provided guideline photos, carbon paper, wood stylus, watercolor paper, clip, paints, paintbrush, and tissue paper. You can get a cup of water and paper towels from home.
The instructions are easy to follow, and it lists everything you need to know and do to finish your masterpiece.
First is to transfer your design to the watercolor paper by using carbon paper. Just trace the design using the wooden stylus.
After transferring the designs, she’s now ready to color them using the watercolor paint provided.
It’s up to you how you want your artwork to look like.
She’s painting her first design. We’re really excited about how these drawings will turn out!
My son did the Colosseum!
My eldest is busy painting her picturesque part of Italy!
Those colors are really nice! These designs can also be made into postcards!
My daughter did well on this one, the subtle amount of color made it more appealing and look more creative.
This one here made use of darker blue and greens, which actually emphasizes the main subject of the picture, the Colosseum.
Here is our new design for postcards! Or maybe, I’ll just have these masterpieces framed and displayed!
This is such a jampacked box, as it provides cool activities, projects, and even recipes! Italy is such a beautiful place with lots of picturesque landmarks and delicious food. This box even helped us learn more about the arts and crafts in the country, and how it plays an important role when it comes to learning more about Western European culture, traditions, and arts. The adventure this box provides is really exciting. The kids enjoyed each and every activity that we did. We are happy to get this box as we are not just learning about a certain region, but a whole country! We really like that we’ve visited quite a few countries that have had no mention in other around the world subscriptions for kids, and for this box we already got 4! I think the KiwiCo attention to detail plus the country selections makes this subscription fantastic, and we can say, one of the best!
What do you think of KiwiCo’s Atlas Crate?
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