I’ve written before about my love for educational toys, books and activities and how I love encouraging the children to learn through fun, especially if it gets them away from the video games they seem to love so much. I’ve also written before about subscription boxes and have even reviewed a couple over the years but this is the first time I have reviewed an educational subscription box. Here is everything you need to know about the Curiosity Box.
What is The Curiosity Box?
The Curiosity box is a STEM education subscription box aimed at children. It is geared up to meet the science needs of key stage 2 children, those aged 7-11. Depending on the box you order you will either receive 4 activities in a jumbo box or 2 activities if you go for the nano box. They are designed to meet the curious nature of inquisitive children when it comes to science, to encourage them to find the answers to their questions through hands on experiments, trial and error and recording and analysing results.
What do you get in the Curiosity Box?
The Curiosity box come with everything you need for the experiments, apart from water if required. Including easy to follow step by step instructions.
There are no hidden costs and you can get started as soon as it arrives. You can easily separate the activities up and do them over the course of the month or equally make a day of it and do them all in one go.
The boxes are designed for one child and therefore contain the right amount of equipment and ingredients for one but I found that my boys worked well together and as all the activities had several steps to them they were able to take turns and help each other. So my top tip is buy one box for the family not one per child.
Our experience
We received our first jumbo curiosity box a few weeks ago and I was really excited to work through some of the science experiments with the kids. We had 4 activities to choose from and of course the children wanted to do the one that looked the messiest first. This involved measuring out water, adding various ingredients, watching it fizz all over and then measuring the contents again, and it really got us all thinking but also laughing and having fun.
One of the things I loved about the box is that you can keep some of the equipment and it can be reused to do other experiments in the future, or you can use them to create your own mini experiments. For example our box contained a mini microscope that can be added to a camera phone to examine something in more detail and the boys have used this on more than one occasion already.
We also found instructions really easy to read and follow so you can either work on them together as a family or, once your child is a confident reader, they could work on them alone.
Are the Curiosity boxes good value for money?
In my opinion the boxes seem really good value for money. You get all the ingredients you need with no need to buy extras and a number of the pieces of equipment can be kept and reused. Each box will easily fill a couple of hours and they are a great way to encourage science.
Overall thoughts
Overall we found that the box was really exciting and the range of activities differ so they don’t feel repetitive at all. Our box included things from making a mess and having a laugh to doing maths, building atoms and working on fine motor skills. All the children realised this was science based and therefore educational to some extent there really is alot of “hidden” lessons going on to with each activity teaching the children something new and requiring different additional skills to be activated.
The curiosity boxes are perfect for making the most out of quality family time and for helping parents teach children about science in a fun and safe way.
I would really recommend The Curiosity box, either as a subscription service or even as a one of treat for all families and especially for those that home educate.
(We were sent a curiosity box in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own)>.