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!
DEAL: Use this link to save 30% on your first box of Kiwi Crate! (or KiwiCo family subscriptions Tinker Crate, Koala Crate, Atlas Crate, Cricket Crate, and Doodle Crate).
This month’s theme is GRAVITY CAR!
Kiwi Crate includes all necessary supplies for the featured activities, plus explore! magazine.
Engineer a gravity-powered car, then explore the effects of gravitational energy while experimenting with different weights and wheel sizes to get your car movin’ and groovin’. Finish off by creating colorful drip paintings.
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.
Tinker, Create, Innovate
KiwiCo equips the next generation of innovators with the tools and confidence for creative exploration and problem solving.
There is always a comic featuring Steve the Kiwi and his pals.
This magazine also includes a lot of historical and scientific information relating to the current theme, the science of gravity!
No lesson about gravity would be complete without the mention of Isaac Newton. The next article briefly tells us how he discovered gravity!
There’s also a suggested activity in the booklet, where we need to make our own parachute and find out how it works against gravity’s pull.
Ever wondered why astronauts can jump so high on the moon? They answered that in one of the booklet’s featured articles. Another activity is a gravity-related crossword puzzle.
My son enjoyed the crossword puzzle and he finished it in no time!
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 the supplies they provided for the crafts. It also has a rating of messiness and parental involvement for each activity.
Here are all the items we need for this month’s Gravity Car!
The booklet provides detailed instruction and some illustrations to help us finish the project easily, and for the first one, we are making the gravity car!
Part A is building the wheels. The crate provided the big and small wheels, dowel, gray sticky foam donuts, white sticky foam donuts, and spools.
They also provided some useful tips and suggestions to finish the project with ease! Here’s part B where we will be building the frame of the gravity car.
For Part B, we used the provided L-shaped pieces, straight pieces, orange sticky foam donuts, spacers, screws, plastic tubes, and wood donuts.
We always start our projects by separating the components according to the parts or steps they belong to. Having this kind of system will make everything fast and easy. We started with the wheel, and we finished the first part in no time.
Building the frame is more tricky as it involves more parts. Thankfully, the instructions on the booklet are detailed and easy to understand.
Each step on this part of the project has an illustration in the booklet where we can check if we’re doing and sliding stuff correctly.
My son is almost done with the frame, and we will be moving on to the next step!
For part C, we are making the weight that will pull the car along with gravity to work! We’ll make use of a bottle, string, and soft and scratchy strips.
After filling the bottle with water and sticking the strip on, it’s time to wrap it with the string.
We’re ready to assemble everything!
We used these additional materials to finally finish our car: the bumper, some dowels, and rubber rings, aside from the completed wheels, frame, and weight.
The booklet also included the instructions on how to use and make the car work, with the help of GRAVITY!
The next activity that we’re so much excited about is doing the drip paintings!
For the paintings, we used some dye tablets, clear stickers, clip, cups, art stand, watercolor paper, craft sticks, dropper, and some scrap papers from home.
After dissolving the dye tablets, we dropped some on the paper on the art stand held by a clip.
The gravity pulls the drippings downward, creating some line patterns.
Before starting with the Gravity Car Experiments, it’s time to check first if the car is working. If it’s not, you can consult the booklet on some troubleshooting tips.
Here are the fun experiments that we can try with the cool car! The instructions were clear and detailed, as expected.
First is the water bottle experiment where we can try different weights on the bottle (different amounts of water) and see how it affects the car. The included basket can be used for this experiment as well.
It’s time to test how the car works with weights!
Instead of the bottle, we can also replace it with this basket and a pipe cleaner to add weight to the car. This time, some toys and small items can be used for the added weight.
We added some small stuff in the basket and replaced the bottle with it.
We all think that the bottle with water better works with the car.
We tried adding more stuff in the basket so the car works like when it has the bottle on.
The heavier the items we add, the more the car works effortlessly.
Here’s the car with just the weight basket on.
It stays in place as the basket is empty.
Here’s everything that we had accomplished from this awesome box!
Extension Activities
The booklet gave us a fun and yummy recipe to try, Newton’s Apple Muffins! The other page also features a quiz, and 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.
It’s another fun and educational crate that my kids really enjoyed! They love the project and the science behind them, which is the natural phenomenon, gravity! The box, as always, provided almost everything we needed to complete the project. All we have to do is to follow the instructions, checking from time to time if what we’re doing is right to avoid going back several steps, or even starting all over again. The magazine is also an amazing inclusion in this crate as it provided us with more knowledge, interesting stuff, and activities to try. It’s definitely a must-try box for the whole family!
Did you enjoy this month’s 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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