Stuff I Love: Kiwicrate.com

Afternoons in our household can seem to drag on forever.  Something about those couple of hours between naptime and dinner are really hard on everyone in our household.  We have snacks, we read books, sometimes they watch a little tv - if it's nice, we try to run outside - but when it's cold or dreary outside, we can get a little bored.  For that reason, I try to have some kind of craft we can do if we're really starting to go nuts at any point.  Often, it's as simple as sticking stickers to blank paper, or scribbling with giant crayons in coloring books.  The boys are still young and they are still working on skills like coloring in the lines and cutting with scissors, but they can make some basic crafts and love getting messy.

However, when it comes to dreaming up crafts, I am no good.  I've checked out almost every craft book from the library, I've spent hours on Google and Pinterest, I've read countless blogs, but I still come up short most weeks.  A lot of the activities I find are either not age appropriate, or require supplies that we just don't keep in our house.

Enter Kiwicrate.com  - this amazing website allows you to subscribe to have a box of craft supplies (complete with theme, instructions and all needed materials) delivered to your door every single month! A box for one child costs about $20 and for a small fee you can choose a 'sibling add on' to have extra supplies included for another child (or two).  It seems like a steep price until you look inside the box.  Not only are the craft supplies really high quality (they sent us two pairs of brand-name, very-nice scissors in our first kit), but there are enough activities to last for several days.  Plus, you'll be enrolled in their newsletter which will link you to even more activities that compliment that month's theme.

Here's a look at our first craft box.  This month's theme was: Pirates.  We spread out the crafts from our box over two afternoons, but we could have taken longer if we'd wanted.

Here's what I saw when I opened the box

The supplies for one complete kit

 Coloring the treasure chests

Excuse the sideways pic...

Making pirate hats

Pirate ship (notice figurehead on right...)

Coloring the pirate bandannas

Barely got them to hold still to show the whole getup

Mom, are we done taking pictures yet?

Making pirate parrots

Kit made: 2 chests, 2 parrots, 2 bandannas, 2 hats, 2 eye patches and 2 treasure maps

Searching for 'buried' treasure

Found it!

Mmmmmm, chocolate!