What is it?

Ivy Kids is a monthly subscription box that has tons of educational material for little ones from ages 3-8 that are developed by certified early childhood teachers. Each month, a kit is sent that contains more than 10 activities that revolve around problem solving, identifying numbers and letters, building gross motor skills, literacy skills and math skills.

Cost

$38.95/monthly (also have 3-month and 6-month plans for lower price) – get 20% off your first box from Ivy Kids here.

What is included

10-12 creative, hands-on learning activities for your little one that revolve around a certain theme.

Let’s see what’s inside this month’s box.

This month’s theme was about shapes as we learn from the included book “The Secret Birthday Message” by Eric Carle. Personally, in my opinion, I felt this box leaned heavily towards teaching concepts rather than providing any hands-on crafts. The overall theme in this month’s box catered more towards kids ages 5 and above.

However, we managed to do some of the activities and I tried to make it fun for my little one. But this is one of those boxes, that I will keep aside for when my child is a bit older.

Shape Collage

The was one of the most fun activity in this month’s box for Ms. H. She liked identifying different shapes and just had fun being creative as she glued them on the provided cardboard circle.

Sorting Shapes

This was another fun learning activity that my toddler thoroughly enjoyed.

The Biggest Star

A decorating activity that any toddler/preschooler would enjoy.

Story Retelling Cards

We used the provided cards to match the shapes to the appropriate matching pictures. Eventually, we will also be trying out the memory game — so this is great for identifying shapes, matching and playing the memory game.

Fun with a Geoboard

This was a challenging activity for my little one as she was having a tough time grasping on the rubber bands and stretching them on the red board to make any shapes or letters. I made various shapes and let her guess the shapes/letters — just so we could utilize this learning activity. But we will be revisiting this once she is a bit older.

Shape Hunt

Next activity we chose to work on was the shape hunt. This requires your child to identify the shapes present in each room of the house. This was a clever activity actually, because it teaches about things present in our  every day lives in a fun learning way. Ms. H was able to recognize the shapes and match it to the appropriate object present in that room.

Guess the Shape

This activity requires your child to identify the 3-dimensional shapes that are provided and match them to the geometric shape board. We learned some new 3d shapes with this activity, and my toddler was able to match at least 3 to 4 shapes on the board without my help — which I thought was great for her age.

Solve the Riddle

This was definitely a challenging activity for my little one so we will be rivisiting this at a later time.

Roll a Shape

In this activity, your child rolls the die and matches the number to the shape that is provided on the sheet. It also reinforces the concept of different shapes as your little one gets better at identifying the shapes.

Roll, Stack and Slide: A 3-D shape Experiment

Relatively simple activity that my toddler enjoyed, although she was not able to understand the concept behind the rolling and the stacking. But in either case, it was fun for her to just roll the 3d shapes.

Shape Overlap Artwork

We just used the provided shape ruler to draw out some shapes and color them. Still too advance of a concept for my child. However, I must mention, that the Little Ivy Tips provided on each sheet do help, as not every activity is designed to teach a concept, sometimes you just have to be creative and do your own thing.

Secret Message

This activity brought the focus back to the theme in the book — which was about a secret message delivered to the little boy on his birthday. Ms. H currently is all about birthday presents and making cards, so she had fun with this activity.

Verdict

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In conclusion, this month’s Ivy Kids box was a miss for us. There were not many hands-on activities it was more focused on teaching concepts without much “fun” factor involved.  However, our opinion is based on this month’s box only, as we have been very satisfied with past subsciption boxes and themes.

 

Have you tried Ivy Kids? Share your views in comments. 🙂

Check out all of our Ivy Kids reviews!