Today I want to bring you a Kiwi Crate review. Do you know what Kiwi Crate is? Have you heard of this subscription box for kids? We subscribed to it at Christmas 2018. It was a nice little surprise for our son that he could look forward to every month. The company, Kiwico.com, actually has a variety of different crates for different ages and interests. The one we chose was for ages 4-8.
A Little Snafu
Our subscription started out a little rough in that the shipper basically destroyed the box. It was awful. This is not really the company’s fault as it is a sturdy box so I don’t know exactly how it ended up in the shape it was in. Unfortunately the first project actually used the box as part of the project, so I quickly contacted the company. They were very apologetic and immediately sent me out a new crate and I will not be letting this snafu effect this Kiwi Crate review. I was expecting for it to be the same project, but it was a totally new project. It got here in time to wrap and put under the tree so I was happy with their quick replacement.
The Cost
I didn’t find the cost to be outrageous for a science kit. I will say that if you are expecting these projects to last the test of time, that’s probably not going to happen. One of my son’s favorite projects had a piece break off pretty early on. I will say though that he was not exactly using it as it was intended and being a little rough with it, which is to be expected of a 7 year old boy. Still, we often waste more than $20/month on silly things so why not spend that money on something that teaches something at the same time?
The Projects
The projects are pretty cool. Some my son liked better than others, but they were definitely a hit with him. The ones with moving parts that can be used outside of the project are the ones he liked the best. The claw machine was probably the biggest hit of the ones we completed. There are definite science concepts taught with each project and they are often colorful and bright.
The projects came with an instruction booklet, but also an activity booklet. I believe they call it a magazine, but it is filled with all sorts of activities and information to go along with the project. There is typically a comic to read and then pages for things like art, a game, other activities to go with the project or other reading pages for more information on the science behind the project.
The Downside
Okay so I already said one of the projects broke early on. That was the claw machine grabber. One side of the grabber broke off making it’s ability to grab defunct. My son was using it to pick up other things than he should have, so it was definitely being used for extracurricular activities. 😂 This however was more frustrating for me than it was for him that it broke so quickly. Other items have held up better, but these are not high quality items to keep for a long time. HOWEVER, does my son want to part with them? No. So we have a basket full of miscellaneous pieces and I find various pieces all around the house. This is the first downside for me because I hate keep broken things or random junk.
The second downside for our family is that you would think it wouldn’t be that hard to complete one project of this type per month. You would think that…but for us it seemed like they kept piling up after the first few months. I don’t know if the novelty wore off or what, but we just got busy and forgot about them and before we knew it we had 6 months worth that hadn’t been completed yet, so we cancelled our subscription. We may start it back up again sometime to try out one of the older crates as Stephen is getting older, but I got tired of paying for something that we weren’t actively using. We sill have several of them that we haven’t gotten around to completing.
Conclusion
So here is my bottom line Kiwi Crate review. Do I like the idea of them? YES, they’re a definitely 5 in my book. Are they executed well? I would give them a 4 out of 5 on execution. Some projects can be improved, but in general for a disposable science kit they’re pretty functional.
How well do they fit into our family right now in terms of usefulness, I would give a 3. I think when we got them, our son still required a lot of help from us. This means they quickly went to the back burner when we were too busy. He has a lot of interests and we already do multiple science experiments per week. So we struggled to find the time to fit one more in that wasn’t part of our curriculum. Still, I plan to go back when Stephen is a little older and can do the older kits on his own.
Thanks for reading!
