We’re trying out Weekend Box, a box of fun crafts and activities for children age 3 – 8! Briefly, it costs £8.95 per box including shipping, and includes four themed activities to Make, Bake, Explore, and More! You can read a bit more about it here.
As it’s still very wintery and dark, once again these are kitchen overhead LED light -lit photos. All very well for visibility, but not great for photography!
Anyway, the box arrived through the mailbox – no trips to the sorting office!
Isn’t the design colorful?
Inside are four activities, each in individual bags, plus a booklet with instructions and some stickers.
This month’s theme is Valentine’s Day! We were a little busier this half term than anticipated, so we didn’t actually get round to these things until the weekend after, but it didn’t matter. After all, love lasts all year!
The first activity was making a Valentine’s Day card. Inside the little bag was a red crayon, tissue paper, and some lovely blue glitter glue. There was also a blank card and envelope in the box itself.
Little C decided she wanted to make a card for Daddy! Crayon decorations, glitter, and the red tissue paper created a nice 3-D effect.
The finished card!
Next up was making a beaded keyring. Pipe cleaner, split ring, and a little bag of cute heart-shaped beads. This was intended to be a lovely gift for Daddy to go with his card!
Little C is an old hand at pipe cleaner crafting, so she made short work of attaching the pipe cleaner to the split ring.
Then all that needed to be done was to thread the beads onto the pipe cleaner, and twist up the end. I actually did the final bit, to make sure the beads didn’t fall off!
The bead colours were all very carefully arranged for the perfect design.
Who doesn’t love Jam Tarts? Flour and jam were included, and all we had to add was a tiny bit of butter and some water.
Weighing out the butter was great practice for using the kitchen scales, then in went the little pack of flour.
Making pastry is simple but rubbing the butter into the flour is slightly fiddly. However it’s very useful to learn how to do this pretty essential kitchen task! Then a little water was added.
This bit was much more fun to mix! Talk about gooey.
Finally it all came together beautifully into a proper ball of dough. At this point it needed to be refrigerated for a little while, so we decided to make the last activity while we were waiting.
Making a Moving Love Bug. Card, googly eyes, sticker, tape (oops, forgot to include that in the picture!), string, a straw, and some black card.
This activity involved some cutting out and sticking. It was very handy to have a roll of tape included. The black circles and pipe cleaners made a very impressive spider shape!
There’s his (or her) little love heart tummy!
On the back we stuck pieces of the straw, and threaded them with the lovely stripey string. Time to see if it works!
Wheeeeee! It works!
After creating the lovely bug, the pastry dough had been in the fridge for long enough, so time to make the jam tarts.
We’d kept back a little flour to stop it sticking when it was rolled out.
Oh, about that…
Er, I don’t own a rolling pin. On the rare occasions I have to roll something out I use a wine bottle. So that’s what we used.
It was actually very effective because pastry should be kept as cold as possible. That bottle of white wine came from the fridge, so it was nice and cool. Well, that’s my excuse.
Continuing with the theme, a wine glass was the perfect tool for cutting out the little circles. We got three nice neat circles from the dough, and then I squashed together the leftover dough to make one more mutant tart base. It’s still going to taste fine!
I dug out my tart tin, and in went the pastry and the jam. They went into the oven and took about 20 minutes to cook.
Little C managed to hold out until they cooled enough to eat, then yum yum!
I do like the range of activities Weekend Box provides. It’s especially good to include something to cook, and of course baking is always going to be popular with children! Jam tarts are a simple principle, but they do require a bit of proper hands-on work. It’s also a recipe that is easily repeated with whatever jam you have around.
The little moving love bug is a very cute idea, and also a handy design to keep in mind for Halloween!
I’m a huge fan of homemade greetings cards, I think it’s important children be encouraged to be creative with things they give. There was lots of glitter glue left over too, which is brilliant as it’s so much better (and less messy!) than regular glue and loose glitter. The keychain is another lovely little idea. Again, it’s quite simple, but looks attractive.
The pastry making and the bead threading are both excellent for fine motor control, which is a nice bonus for children at the younger end of the scale.
Previous Weekend Boxes had each activity on separate cards. They are now trialing an all-in-one booklet, which I think is a splendid idea. I find individual cards can be easier to lose, so having everything in one place is a big improvement! Also, if you wanted to keep one activity in particular, for example the child-friendly recipes, you can easily cut out and keep that particular page. There are also some extra things in the booklet, such as a little comic to complete, plus some fun trivia about this month’s theme.
The point of activity boxes is to have everything collected in one place, so you don’t have to trawl house and shops for the various bits like beads and pipe cleaners. The instructions are also clear and easy to read, and I think little ones respond very well, to something which is designed just for them! You do need to provide the odd thing, such as scissors and, in this case, butter. However they are all items you’d have in your home! The degree of parental supervision depends on the child, but these are definitely activities to do together. Having everything set up for you takes away a fair amount of stress from activity time!
There are quite a few children’s activity boxes out there, but I think this is an excellent budget option. The individual bags mean you can do them one after the other or at different times over the course of a couple of days. You’ll have some creative fun, plus something yummy to eat at the end!
Oh, and this is why the main picture doesn’t include the jam tarts!
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A different version of this review was first published on allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
