UPDATE: KiwiCo recently switched things up - now their Panda Crate line spans 0 to 36 months old, and Koala Crate has been reduced to 3 to 4 year olds! What do we think? I'm thinking it's a good thing!
I absolutely love your videos and have seen so many! They are incredibly useful. And I refer back to your blogs time and time again. It's so helpful that you put so many shopping links and alternatives in there. It's crazy to me that you don't have more subscribers!!!
This is what I really need. My daughter is 28 months and I thought of getting the Panda crate. But looking at your other videos, it seems like she'll be too old for the panda crate. Seems like I'd enjoy the Koala crate more than my daughter.
Hi! So Kiwico made some changes about a month ago, I'll probably have a video in a month or so about it - but long story short they seemed to take the feedback from this video and changed the lines. So Koala is now 3-4 year old and Panda is no newborn to 3 year olds. They made some changes to make it a bit more like Lovevery too with the Panda "PLUS" line. Koala is still where I'd go for activities though, and Panda is more toys(ish)
@theconfusedmom oh I see that now. Thank you for the response. It looks like the regular panda crate doesn't have a grow with me toy. So the toys I see in the ads are probably very rare to get with regular panda crate or probably just not included in the panda crate. Given the price of kiwico, I'll give the regular crate a shot and just for curiosity, I wanna see what the random toys would we actually get. And I'll make my daughter a little older in the qeustion box for age and see if we'll get something that's more age appropriate activity. Thanks again.
Keep me posted on how it works for you guys! I'm thinking baout resubscribing for the panda crate line for 3-4 year olds frame to see how it's changed too@@jq.8313
They did! We just ended up not replanting them once they outgrew the container and I think our lives fell into a pretty extended chaos period after that. I should probably try again now that we are settled lol
We love the Koala crate - we've been on them for roughly 1 1/2 years, so we have most. We started when our older daughter was 2 years old (the subscription was her birthday present) and the first crate was the doctor kit. She immediately was hooked. That kit is still played with daily by her and our now 19 month old. Our daughters developed their love for arts and crafts with Kiwico. They weren't overly interested in anything I prepared but those kits, some I barely have any involvement and they love that they can do it all by themselves. We also really like that some kits include games - they really prefer those over many other games we have (like the tree memory, the color dice game, the animal tree hanging game or the farm harvest game). And the probs for pretend play - they also deliver us mail daily with their Mail kit items. And you are so right - the baking in fractions is absolute genius. We had it for over a year now and they both play with it first thing every morning. Actually, how mcuh they use and love Kiwico items had me cancel our Lovevery subscription. I just couldn't justify the price paid for Lovevery any longer when those items are rarely played with and the much more affordable Kiwico crates and items keep them busy for hours every day. I can see why you say the subscription is more worthwhile from age 3 but I'm glad that we started at age 2. Every kit seems to have at least one easier and one more difficult activity. So what I did, is to store the more difficult activities for later (my kids are both the type that want to do everything by themselves). This way we even got a lot longer use out of the crates (some activities I'm still holding back until they can work on them together) and the easier activity is already perfect for a 2 year old.
Ahh I love this!! The mail kid seems to be a hugeeee hit! When you bring the activities back out, do you bring them out in the KiwiCo crate box each time or just the materials? I do REALLY love the flexibility of the crates and how you long they can ultimately end up lasting (I think we even still have 2 activities from the glow crate in our storage unit lol). I feel like that was such a hidden surprise and happy to hear others have had the same experience!
@@confidentlymom I don't store them in the crates - we don't have a lot of space. They get excited when a crate comes of course, so they always help to open it. But then I take the art/crafts activities and put them in those mesh pouches in which many store their puzzles and games. The games go in our games drawer so the kids can play when they feel like it and the props for pretend play go mostly in our pretend play bin (and the puppets joined our other puppets). I stopped toy rotation a while ago - I decluttered, grouped like toys together and gave everything we kept a home. That was a huge positive change for us since my kids know exactly what they want to play with and always asked for what was out of rotation. Now they know exactly where every toy is and the Kiwico items are no different. I do keep most arts and crafts out of reach (exceptions are colored pencils, markers, crayons, self inking stamps and the dot markers are currently on trial) and we do one or two arts/crafts/sensory per day together from those out of reach items, which they choose. At this point, we have more than just the KiwiCo activities of course, now that they're so into arts and crafts but they still choose the ones that can be used multiple times a lot and the project which I think they are not ready for just yet, are waiting in the art/craft project bin as well. I do rotate the books - we just have too many and I'm terrible with decluttering books 😆 but roughly 50, which are all the ones that they read daily are out all the time. Kellan to the rescue and the unbirthday cake are among those. Our younger one loved the book with the tricycle ride a long time, the one with the stop sign - stop was one of her first words because of it. I do keep the instruction pamphlet with the activities that we'll still be doing. So they do know that it's from their crates, once I bring a certain activity out.
@@ronjab4586 Ahh thank you for sharing!! Yeah with a 4 year old and all of our moves we stopped doing toy rotation too. We just signed a lease for a year actually to take a breather and i'm thinking about doing the decluttered grouped bins instead of rotation too! With different zones around the new house acting as "rotations" haha
@@confidentlymom Zones of toys have been working so well for us. It helps them to find everything and it makes cleanup a breeze. We're using the IKEA trofast system to organize the zones: one corner is the playkitchen, another is dressup and pretend, another is all building and small world, a smaller cube shelf has instruments and fidget toys as a calm down corner since that helps our preschooler best and another small display has educational toys (mostly puzzles). For art they have a small table but the accessible stuff is in a cart, so we can also take it on the balcony or switchbto the kitchen table. We live in a small 2 bedroom apartment and that helps so well to have some toys everywhere without getting anything overwhelmed with toys. The gross motor is all over the place but that's ok - it keeps them busy and is always easy to clean up. Congratulations on your lease - is it in an area you plan to stay now? We'll be moving soon as well, in a slightly smaller space, that doesn't have any storage - so lots of decluttering to do again but it really helped that we already stopped rotation. The new place wouldn't have any possibility for that anyway
![KiwiCo vs. Lovevery [AFTER September 2020 Toddler Update]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gImIAi2Z1EU/mqdefault.jpg)
UPDATE: KiwiCo recently switched things up - now their Panda Crate line spans 0 to 36 months old, and Koala Crate has been reduced to 3 to 4 year olds! What do we think? I'm thinking it's a good thing!
I absolutely love your videos and have seen so many! They are incredibly useful. And I refer back to your blogs time and time again. It's so helpful that you put so many shopping links and alternatives in there. It's crazy to me that you don't have more subscribers!!!
Awe thank you!! That means so much!!
This is what I really need. My daughter is 28 months and I thought of getting the Panda crate. But looking at your other videos, it seems like she'll be too old for the panda crate. Seems like I'd enjoy the Koala crate more than my daughter.
Hi! So Kiwico made some changes about a month ago, I'll probably have a video in a month or so about it - but long story short they seemed to take the feedback from this video and changed the lines. So Koala is now 3-4 year old and Panda is no newborn to 3 year olds. They made some changes to make it a bit more like Lovevery too with the Panda "PLUS" line.
Koala is still where I'd go for activities though, and Panda is more toys(ish)
@theconfusedmom oh I see that now. Thank you for the response. It looks like the regular panda crate doesn't have a grow with me toy. So the toys I see in the ads are probably very rare to get with regular panda crate or probably just not included in the panda crate. Given the price of kiwico, I'll give the regular crate a shot and just for curiosity, I wanna see what the random toys would we actually get.
And I'll make my daughter a little older in the qeustion box for age and see if we'll get something that's more age appropriate activity.
Thanks again.
Keep me posted on how it works for you guys! I'm thinking baout resubscribing for the panda crate line for 3-4 year olds frame to see how it's changed too@@jq.8313
Did the window garden seeds sprout for you? The plants never grew for us. Perhaps I did something wrong. I thought maybe we got bad seeds.
They did! We just ended up not replanting them once they outgrew the container and I think our lives fell into a pretty extended chaos period after that. I should probably try again now that we are settled lol
@@confidentlymom what month did you do plant the seeds?
Oh gosh I couldn't even begin to guess! Somewhere between Jan to July. Sorry!@@AlNisa21
We love the Koala crate - we've been on them for roughly 1 1/2 years, so we have most. We started when our older daughter was 2 years old (the subscription was her birthday present) and the first crate was the doctor kit. She immediately was hooked. That kit is still played with daily by her and our now 19 month old.
Our daughters developed their love for arts and crafts with Kiwico. They weren't overly interested in anything I prepared but those kits, some I barely have any involvement and they love that they can do it all by themselves.
We also really like that some kits include games - they really prefer those over many other games we have (like the tree memory, the color dice game, the animal tree hanging game or the farm harvest game). And the probs for pretend play - they also deliver us mail daily with their Mail kit items.
And you are so right - the baking in fractions is absolute genius. We had it for over a year now and they both play with it first thing every morning.
Actually, how mcuh they use and love Kiwico items had me cancel our Lovevery subscription. I just couldn't justify the price paid for Lovevery any longer when those items are rarely played with and the much more affordable Kiwico crates and items keep them busy for hours every day.
I can see why you say the subscription is more worthwhile from age 3 but I'm glad that we started at age 2. Every kit seems to have at least one easier and one more difficult activity. So what I did, is to store the more difficult activities for later (my kids are both the type that want to do everything by themselves). This way we even got a lot longer use out of the crates (some activities I'm still holding back until they can work on them together) and the easier activity is already perfect for a 2 year old.
Ahh I love this!! The mail kid seems to be a hugeeee hit!
When you bring the activities back out, do you bring them out in the KiwiCo crate box each time or just the materials?
I do REALLY love the flexibility of the crates and how you long they can ultimately end up lasting (I think we even still have 2 activities from the glow crate in our storage unit lol). I feel like that was such a hidden surprise and happy to hear others have had the same experience!
@@confidentlymom I don't store them in the crates - we don't have a lot of space. They get excited when a crate comes of course, so they always help to open it. But then I take the art/crafts activities and put them in those mesh pouches in which many store their puzzles and games. The games go in our games drawer so the kids can play when they feel like it and the props for pretend play go mostly in our pretend play bin (and the puppets joined our other puppets).
I stopped toy rotation a while ago - I decluttered, grouped like toys together and gave everything we kept a home. That was a huge positive change for us since my kids know exactly what they want to play with and always asked for what was out of rotation. Now they know exactly where every toy is and the Kiwico items are no different.
I do keep most arts and crafts out of reach (exceptions are colored pencils, markers, crayons, self inking stamps and the dot markers are currently on trial) and we do one or two arts/crafts/sensory per day together from those out of reach items, which they choose. At this point, we have more than just the KiwiCo activities of course, now that they're so into arts and crafts but they still choose the ones that can be used multiple times a lot and the project which I think they are not ready for just yet, are waiting in the art/craft project bin as well.
I do rotate the books - we just have too many and I'm terrible with decluttering books 😆 but roughly 50, which are all the ones that they read daily are out all the time. Kellan to the rescue and the unbirthday cake are among those. Our younger one loved the book with the tricycle ride a long time, the one with the stop sign - stop was one of her first words because of it.
I do keep the instruction pamphlet with the activities that we'll still be doing. So they do know that it's from their crates, once I bring a certain activity out.
@@ronjab4586 Ahh thank you for sharing!! Yeah with a 4 year old and all of our moves we stopped doing toy rotation too. We just signed a lease for a year actually to take a breather and i'm thinking about doing the decluttered grouped bins instead of rotation too! With different zones around the new house acting as "rotations" haha
@@confidentlymom Zones of toys have been working so well for us. It helps them to find everything and it makes cleanup a breeze. We're using the IKEA trofast system to organize the zones: one corner is the playkitchen, another is dressup and pretend, another is all building and small world, a smaller cube shelf has instruments and fidget toys as a calm down corner since that helps our preschooler best and another small display has educational toys (mostly puzzles). For art they have a small table but the accessible stuff is in a cart, so we can also take it on the balcony or switchbto the kitchen table. We live in a small 2 bedroom apartment and that helps so well to have some toys everywhere without getting anything overwhelmed with toys. The gross motor is all over the place but that's ok - it keeps them busy and is always easy to clean up.
Congratulations on your lease - is it in an area you plan to stay now? We'll be moving soon as well, in a slightly smaller space, that doesn't have any storage - so lots of decluttering to do again but it really helped that we already stopped rotation. The new place wouldn't have any possibility for that anyway
I am a fan of the koala crate. So far we got color mixing, neighborhood fun, the food one, and the mail one.
The neighborhood one was one of the ones i thought looked really fun!! And of course color mixing is always a hit haha!
@@confidentlymomso I have a crate that's not on this list. it 's letter play and that's probably one of my favorite ones to date.
@@kimberlyfontaine2265 ohh thank you!!!