Happy New Year!  I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season and time off from school.  I thought I'd start off this year with a new blog post.

I figured it might be fun share a gift that Charlie got for Christmas.  As the kids get older we are trying to find new things that offer more of an experience and that also incorporate learning.  My mom suggested Kiwi Crates for both of our kids.  This is a subscription based product that arrives once a month.  It is cool because you can choose your crates based on your child's age and interests (to a certain extent).  Charlie go the "KIWI" with science, art, and other fun activities for kids 5-8 years old.  Claire got a subscription to "DOODLE" which is art and design for kids ages 9-16.  When they arrived Claire disappeared to her room with hers, put it together, and voila!  She now has a cute tote bag that she assembled!  However, Charlie's was pretty involved. We started working on it this morning when I thought, "hmm...maybe I should take pics and blog about this!"  So here we go!

At the top of this page is a photo of Charlie with his first Kiwi Crate box.  When we opened it up it was full of fun stuff!  

This month's shipment included an anatomy lesson.  There is a booklet on the human body with fun facts, a cute comic, and a lot of other fun stuff.  There is also an instruction manual for the crafts and a huge poster of the human body.  Charlie started out by making the stethoscope (no pics of that process because I hadn't decided to blog quite yet).  After that he sewed a felt brain, heart, and kidney.   I showed him what to do and he caught on pretty quickly.  After the majority of the "sewing" was done he stuffed them and then added the eyes and the smiles. Of course the eyes and smiles were his favorite part!

Once we finished with these cute little guys we tried out the X-ray part.  We pulled out the giant poster.  We put a clear piece of plastic (included) over the right arm/hand laid the bones.  *Charlie was more interested in his little plush guys so we didn't completely finish the x-ray process yet but he got the idea.

I plan to help him finish the X-ray part later but we did then move onto the last part which was affixing the plush organs to the poster.  The kit came with little velcro circles that stick to both the poster and the plush organs.  Charlie stuck those guys on and we were good to go!

And, of course, he had to "listen" to the guys heart with his new stethoscope!  We had a lot of fun doing this and are really looking forward to seeing what comes next month!  This is truly a great product.  It not only has a learning component but it is an activity that we enjoyed doing together.  No electronic devices here and Charlie had FUN!  On top of that, he is super excited to see what arrives next month!  So, if you are looking for an "out of the box" type gift/activity for your kids, check out Kiwi Crates!  It is a super cool product!

Until next time!  :) 

- Bonnie