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.
The theme of this month’s box is Mothering Sunday! As it happens we’re a little behind with this, as Mother’s Day was the previous Sunday. Not that it matters, because it means I get an extra Mother’s Day!
The brightly designed box is addressed to your child, and fits nicely through the mailbox.
Each activity comes in its own little bag, with a couple of the larger items, such as paper and a glue stick, separately.
Everyone carries around keys, and a Keyring designed by your child is a lovely thing to have with you!
The little coloured pencils were perfect to decorate the insert, and it snapped easily into the blank.
What a lovely thing to attach to my keys!
As every mother should be treated like a queen on Mother’s Day, naturally she needs a Crown.
This involved lots of cutting and sticking. There were a couple of sheets of foam for making the flowers, plus some little sticky gems for extra decoration. There were also flower templates, but Little C preferred to design her own flowers. One edge of the green paper was cut to resemble grass, so the whole thing had a garden feel to the design.
Brief fitting and taping together, and then I have my crown! It’s very spring-like (which is especially nice as there’s about six inches of snow outside!)
Every Weekend Box comes with a recipe, and this month’s was Shortbread, yummy! Flour and sugar are included, and you provide a small amount of butter.
Measuring out the butter is a great way to practice using the scales. The mixing and creaming required a bit of help, as it was quite hard work. I usually use my trusty KitchenAid when baking, so neither of us are used to mixing by hand!
It ended up being much easier just getting in there with hands anyway!
Once again, out came the trusty wine bottle rolling pin! Little C did a great job shaping, cutting, and decorating the shortbread fingers.
While it was in the oven we made the final activity.
Flowers are a traditional Mother’s Day gift, and a Tissue Flower will last forever! We also needed an empty yogurt pot, and as we didn’t have one handy, it was necessary to eat a yogurt straight away.
The tissue had to be folded, trimmed, and then the pipe cleaner wound round to create a stem. It was quite a simple process, but the result looks lovely!
This would be a terrific craft to repeat to make a whole bunch of brightly coloured flowers!
Oh, and perfect timing for the shortbread.
It’s delicious! Little C also made little heart flags with the red paper and cocktail sticks in the box. Isn’t that a thoughtful addition?
Both Little C and I enjoy doing the Weekend Box activities every month, but this one has been a particular treat for me! The shortbread was absolutely delicious, and such a simple recipe! I love to bake, but I’ve never made shortbread before. I’m definitely going to do it again, though next time the KitchenAid will probably be involved.
I love the idea of a crown, and it was fun for Little C to make her own flowers. Plus those sticky gems are brilliant, there were a few left over for future projects.
The tissue flowers are incredibly effective and very easy for little hands to make. You could have a lot of fun combining different colours!
Children produce so much artwork that it can be difficult to know what to keep, but a keyring is the perfect way of carrying around a little something your child has created just for you.
The point of activity boxes is to have everything collected in one place, so you don’t have to trawl house and shops for things like tissue paper 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!
This has been a perfect Bonus Mother’s Day!
Click here to read more Weekend Box reviews.
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A different version of this review was first published on allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
