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 FRANCE!
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!
Bonjour! The cute envelope uses a string closure.
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 also introduced to Anya the cricket and Milo the sandpiper.
Here’s a list of 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 Linnea in Monet’s Garden and The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau.
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!
We got a sticker that represents this month’s featured country, France. It features one of its famous landmarks, The Eiffel Tower.
We will be placing it on the front page of the Adventure Book, along with the other countries that we already explored!
There it is, just above the book’s title!
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 France’s notable events, sports, places, or products from that particular location.
Atlas Crate Activities
These pages feature the beginning of the adventures of Anya and Milo in France.
One of their first stops is the famous church of Notre-Dame.
Notre–Dame de Paris, also called Notre–Dame Cathedral, cathedral church in Paris, France. It is the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages and is distinguished for its size, antiquity, and architectural interest.
The booklet also features an article about Impressionist Art, which is an art style where the artist captures an image of an object as to how someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. Also, most of these types of art have lots of colors, and mostly outdoor scenes.
Escargot, or edible snails, are also featured in this booklet. Escargot is often served as an hors d’oeuvre (an appetizer or starter) and consumed not only by French people but also people from Portugal, Sardinia, and Spain.
A mime entertains people through body motions, without the use of speech. And one of the most famous Mimes or Mime Artists is Jean-Gaspard Deburau, a French acrobat in the early 1800s. He played the character named Pierrot.
Atlas Crate Recipe
This month’s recipe is for Gougères! It is a baked savory choux pastry made of choux dough mixed with cheese, and the cheeses can be grated Gruyère, Comté, Emmentale, or other types of cheeses and ingredients!
They included complete instructions on how to do this delicious pastry recipe. You’ll need a cup of flour, salt, milk, water, butter, eggs, and grated Swiss cheese.
Here you can see that we’re already in the step where we added the flour mixture to the heated milk, water and butter.
Mix it until it forms a dough!
After adding the eggs and cheese to the mixture, it’s time to scoop out portions of it, and instead of just forming them on parchment papers, we choose to put the balls of dough on muffin pans.
Here are the finished gougères! They’re delicious!
My daughter is really proud of her gougères! They’re nice and cheesy, and my kids definitely love them! The platter was emptied in no time!
Atlas Crate Projects
For this month’s Atlas Crate projects, we’re making Stained Glass Window and Racing Cyclist!
Activity No. 1: Stained Glass Window. For the first activity, the kit provided a window wall, translucent sheet, paints, and paintbrush.
FYI – This crate was designed before the Notre Dame fire, and shipped right around that time. KiwiCo sent an email when this crate shipped explaining the situation.
One of the most famous stained glass windows that you can see in France is the Rose window in the Notre-Dame de Paris. It is called a rose window because of its round shape and how it is divided into many sections, like the petals of the beautiful flower. Hopefully someday we will get to visit it.
As always, to make the activities easy and more fun to do, the crate provided a complete and detailed instruction sheet.
My daughter placed the translucent sheet beneath the window wall so she can paint it and create the color patterns that she likes.
The sheet also provided more information about the project. They also gave examples of famous stained glass windows like those in Notre-Dame, and some other churches.
Here’s the finished colorful stained glass window!
It looks even better when illuminated from the other side!
Activity No. 2: Racing Cyclist. For the second activity, we used the sticky foam circle, small and big circles, square dowel, washers, clear rings, string, bar, and cyclist piece.
They also included a complete and detailed instruction sheet for this activity. It consists of two parts.
The first part is building the bike.
For the second part, you need to make the bike move.
After building the bike with the biker, the kids then build the mechanism and attach the bike to it to make it move!
The sheet also includes important and interesting information about Tour de France, an annual men’s multiple stage bicycle race that also passes through other countries aside from France. It consists of 21 day-long stages over the course of 23 days.
Here’s our biker, ready for the race! It’s fun to play with as you can see the biker move while he’s pedaling! Well, if it doesn’t work, maybe you need a little tune-up!
France is definitely a place in our bucket list! Who wouldn’t want to visit such a wonderful place with lots of picturesque views and great tasting food? We’re happy to make our own gougères, especially my daughter. The pastry came out nice and delicious, with the right amount of creaminess from the cheese. Also, the booklet provided cool information about popular places, food, and even entertainment in France! We would love to see a real mime artist too! As for the projects, my daughter enjoyed both. Her stained glass window looks stunning, and she found the racing cyclist really fun. Atlas Crate is definitely one of the best around the world activity boxes out there!
What do you think of KiwiCo’s Atlas Crate?
Comments