toucanBox May 2020: Creative crafts for curious kids

When I was asked to review toucanBox I have to confess I agreed with slight trepidation. We used to receive these a while ago and whilst we did enjoy them, I found their frequency at that time (fortnightly) and the amount of materials that came with them, quite overwhelming. I ended up piling the boxes up unopened and getting stressed each time one arrived as we hadn’t caught up with the last! However, those were the days when we could go to the beach at the weekend. Now, stuck in lockdown the idea of crafts through the door started to appeal!

I familiarised myself with the website and could see a few changes had been made. Now boxes come once a month. They contain two activities as well as a magazine and a surprise too! Not only that, but you get to personalise and choose the activities which is just brilliant. At £8.95 per box (plus £2.95 delivery) you get the following every month:

Activity one – ours was to make a snappy crocodile
Activity two – ours was tie dye butterflies
A great magazine full of other games and ideas
A range of stickers and extra bits for each craft
A surprise (in our case an eraser in disguise as a green crayon!)

The highlights

It was actually pretty hard to chose which activities to get in the box. I ended up going for the tie dye as our son did some of this last year and really enjoyed it. I chose the crocodile because having watched Hook recently he has been talking about the tick tock croc a lot lately. This was a great activity that our 7 year old was mostly able to do himself with a little bit of supervision. Everything you need is in the little pack as well as a few extras. You could use these if you did the task again or slightly differently.

Our son only really needed help with some of the more fiddly cutting and sticking such as the teeth. The instructions were easy to follow and it was great fun making him. Here’s how ours turned out, we also added a mini clock inside his mouth so he really was tick tock croc!

Next up was the tie dye butterflies. This was so much fun and not something I had tried before. We really enjoyed thinking of patterns and seeing how they turned out.

There was an additional task in this pack, linked to the task. It featured the set of paints you can see and the brush and was around mixing colours. We gave this a miss but the brush is really good quality so I have kept them both for other activities that I am sure we’ll end up doing in the weeks ahead.

We were really pleased with how these turned out and plan to give these to some of our friends. I had worried that this might be a bit ‘too girly’ for our son but he really enjoyed it.

More than just activities

In the middle of the box, hidden in a secret compartment was a little surprise…Granted the wrapper is a bit loose but this is a really good quality, fun, eraser.

What was a real benefit for us though was the magazine. It is full of interviews, activities, ideas and creative projects to inspire. Our favourites were the interview with an illustrator, the rocket experiment and the funny food faces.

This was a real bonus and we managed to spend almost half a morning doing the rocket experiment. Sadly we let ourselves down by not having enough vinegar or a cork that fitted properly…but we plan to do it again when we do as it was a fantastic way to introduce some homeschooling work on planets and space!