Weekend Box is 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.
This month’s theme is Mischievous Monsters. How very appropriate!
Look at the lovely mailing box! It will fit through the door, and it’s addressed to your child so they have their very own mail. (Though you might want to hide it until you’re ready!)
The box opens up, and the inside is decorated too. (There’s a cute cut-out of shoes that younger children can use to practice their lace-tying, but Little C has that covered so we didn’t do that part. It’s a nice extra though.)
The bits for each activity are in those little bags, helpfully colour-coded, there’s an instruction booklet, plus there are stickers to collect.
Little C had a good look through the instructions, and decided the first activity she wanted to do was the Monster Apple! Well, it involved Nutella and sugar, so hardly a surprise.
(For some reason I totally failed to take my usual pictures of the instructions, so you’ll have to make do with descriptions. )
Included was a mini package of Nutella, some coloured beans, and coloured sugar. Making the monster head was simple enough: take an apple (not included of course), remove a thin slice from one side to allow it to sit up, then cut a chunk out for the mouth. Little C was able to do this herself with a bit of help from me, though parents of tiny children would probably have to do the cutting themselves.
Once the basic head was done she spread the Nutella in the mouth and on the top, which acted as glue for the chocolate beans (teeth and eyes) and sugar (hair).
Looks delicious! And also a bit like a Ninja Turtle. I suspect some of the chocolate beans did not make it onto the monster head. Also possibly some of the Nutella…
Anyway, on to the next activity.
Here were were making a Monstrous Bookmark. There was foam to cut out, pink for the body and glittery green to decorate, black paper for the mouth, and the all-important googly eyes. Oh, and a glue stick. Apparently we were supposed to have four, but there were only three in the pack. But that meant Little C was inspired to make a three-eyed monster!
She also decided to make herself an extra eye to match. Looks pretty cool, huh?
Next up was making a Monster Puppet. This involved paint, and what little monster doesn’t like making a mess?
Fortunately it wasn’t that messy. Paint was applied to a hand to make a handprint. Then the eye stickers were stuck on the fingertips, and finally the whole thing was covered with glue and glitter.
After it dried it was cut out and stuck on a giant lolly stick to make the puppet.
By the way, if you have lefthanded children, do buy them the special lefty scissors. It’s essential.
On to the final activity.
This was making a Monster Cress Head. The idea was to make a little head that would eventually sprout cress for hair.
I don’t have any pictures of the process, the head would be made with a popsock and filled with two peat pellets which would be soaked in water to make the earth. There were a couple of extra googly eyes, and a small elastic band to make a nose.
Well, playing with mud/earth is always fun, and cress seeds are satisfying for children to grow, not least because they can eat them afterwards!
This was the final result of the cress monster. I’m not quite sure the nose works, but Little C decided it was a fish. OK then. This pictures was taken after a few days, because as you can see, the seeds are beginning to sprout! The instructions also said to cut a few holes in the popsock when sprouting happens, which is why it looks like the moths have been at it.
What a great bunch of activities!
The bookmark was simple to make but incredibly effective. The contrasting colours worked really well. Also, children seem to find foam much easier to cut than paper or card.
The hand puppet involved glitter and paint, which are going to be high on any kid’s list of fun crafting supplies.
The cress head, while hilariously grotesque, is going to look fantastic once the cress grows out. And we can eat it! Growing something is also very good for delayed gratification.
I did have slight reservations about the Nutella, because I am one of those mothers who has banned it from the house (have you ever read the ingredients? Yeuch.) But never mind, it was a one-off. I think this would be a really fun snack to make with peanut butter instead of Nutella. I understand that Weekend Box would have found it difficult to include peanut butter as so many kids have nut allergies nowadays (though of course Nutella does contain tree nuts). But for ease of use and handy prepackaged food-glue, Nutella is an understandable choice.
I think we’ll definitely do this again, but with peanut butter subbed for the Nutella and raisins for the chocolate beans. And no sugar hair!
I love the neutral themes of these boxes, there’s something for all children to enjoy. Little ones will need more help, but after all, this is the point of activity boxes – to spend time doing fun stuff with your kids! It’s also a bargain at less than £9, and you’ve got plenty to do.
So even with a sugar-bomb snack in there, this is a wonderful box. First the mess factor, which was higher than normal, but of course meant it was a great success. Little monsters love mess, right?
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Oh, yes, and there was definitely some cleanup after the glitter!
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A different version of this review was first published on allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
