If you’re on Facebook or twitter you’ve probably seen adverts for Toucan Box appear and a promise of a first free box. I’m intrigued by things like this so a week or so ago I sent off for my free box, and paid the extra £1 to add on an additional box to allow both the children to have their own.

The registration was easy and you add in your children’s details, name and age and they make sure the box comes addressed to them and has age appropriate activities in it.

Our first Boxes arrived and I was impressed that they were the right size to fit through the letter box as well as being quite sturdy so would easily withstand the mechanics of Royal Mail. The children were excited to see their names on the boxes and were keen to dig into them.

The boxes are aimed at children from 3-8 years old and say they will come packed with everything you need to explore, learn, play and create. There are three boxes to choose from, the petite, the grande and the super. The petite is the one that you get free and is £3.95 + 98p postage, and is sent every two weeks.

The boxes are themed and the theme for the first box was Pirates, and we were sent the bits to make a Treasure Map and a parrot. I wasn’t sure if Mr D would find this particularly engaging, but to be fair he did. We made the parrot up first and then set about making the treasure map. As coincidence would have it he had chosen a pirate book from the library so we could read that and talk about how the characters had a treasure map and we could spot the parrots on the pages.

The materials supplied are of a good quality – there was a glue stick and a pack of crayons which will go into the craft box to be used again in future.

I forgot to cancel the subscription so ended up with a second Toucan Box. This one was Kings and Queens themed and the children had great fun making up a crown each and then colouring in the little finger puppet cards.

The boxes both come with other ideas for what to make and do to continue the theme and we are going to make a spyglass to continue the pirates theme (once I have a few more tubes that we can use).  The picture below shows the materials for the Royal Crown – I like that it is all ready to use which meant that with impatient young children we were able to quickly set about to making the crowns up.

I think the boxes are really good for helping to think of ideas to do with children, and to introduce different topics and ideas. At just under £5 per box per fortnight I think it’s probably priced at a fair amount when you take into consideration that it has all the items you need ready and it’s all contained so you can literally open the box and go. Personally for me, I don’t think we can justify the cost of the boxes on a regular basis. If was working it might be different as I’d perhaps not have the time that I do at the moment to prep activities like these.

Maybe when the children are a little older we might get the monthly box for them to share and they can do the activities independently. Of the boxes I have seen though, Toucan Box is by far the best. Super quality of items, really good for parents in terms of linking to educational goals and providing follow up ideas for how to continue the learning.

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