This post is sponsored by Ivy Kids Kits, who also provided us with a review copy of the program. Our review contains the TheHomeSchoolMom team’s honest opinions about the program.
Have you tried (or considered) homeschooling by pairing kids’ educational activities with high-quality, enjoyable children’s books?
Have you discovered how hard that is to actually do?
If you love this idea but struggle with the execution, Ivy Kids Kits can do the hard parts for you!
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Book-inspired STEM kits
We reviewed Ivy Kids’ book-inspired STEM kits for children 3-8 and found they definitely take care of those hard parts, whether those hard parts for you are:
- Picking the books in the first place.
- Remembering to get the books from the library (or buy them) in a timely way
- Thinking up crafts
- Managing to have all the random craft supplies on hand (yikes!)
- Including math, science, engineering, and language arts learning related to every book
The Ivy Kids Kits arrive monthly, and the book is included—no scrambling to shop for, order, or pick up the correct title from the library.
A lovely book in each kit
Both books in the two kits we reviewed are lovely and appealing to children. One kit we reviewed was designed around the classic Blueberries for Sal by Robert McClosky, and the other kit was designed around the lushly illustrated Planting the Wild Garden by Kathryn O. Galbraith.
Just reading the books aloud to kids and looking at the illustrations together is a pleasure, but reading together is educational, too, of course. The Ivy Kids Kits come with bookmarks that have engaging questions about the books written right on them, so parents are nudged to ask good questions about the book that can help children build comprehension and vocabulary.
What else is in the box
The books in the Ivy Kids Kits are only the beginning. Also included in the kits is everything you need for you and your child to do unique hands-on activities that promote the development of math, science, literacy, engineering, and art skills through play and exploration.
And by “everything you need,” we mean these kits include:
- complete instructions for a parent (with suggestions for adjusting the level for older/younger kids)
- crafting materials
- math manipulatives
- basic science experiments or demos
- basic kid-size engineering challenges
- art projects
- games
- activity sheets
- full-color science fact sheets
And more!
Specifically, the two Ivy Kids Kits we explored had a wealth of hands-on and craft items, including:
- Blueberry seeds and a soil pellet along with instructions for planting
- A super simple picture frame craft that reinforces an aspect of the book
- Wind chime craft
- Paints, glue, paint brushes, paint dotter
- Plush mini-bear
- Materials to build a small wooden planter with soil
- Wildflower seeds suitable for planting
- Recipes related to the books (ingredients not provided)
- Various seeds for exploration: cocklebur, sweet gum, carob, cattail, sunflower, pumpkin
- Paper bag fox craft materials
- Foam tree and leaf stickers to help kids with retelling the story from the book
- Printed 4-color game “board” and die for “Seeds on the Move” game
- Materials to build a balance scale
What we loved
Let us say a word about the balance scale project included in the Blueberries for Sal kit. It’s so simple—and the pieces to make it are so completely basic—but we never would have thought of it ourselves in a million years.Â
And this is the genius of Ivy Kids. This very simple balance scale is not only going to show your kids that 14 beads are heavier than 4 beads—it’s also going to show them that it’s pretty easy to build a device that can show when both sides of an equation (or a scale) are in balance. This will help them truly comprehend the concept of weight equivalence or the lack thereof.
And we didn’t have to think of it.
The balance scale materials and instructions just appeared in a box delivered to our front porch.
And each month, an Ivy Kids subscription delivers yet another round of learning opportunities we would never think of ourselves.
Worksheets?
A common question about various brands of educational kits is whether they are “mostly worksheets.” When you open your Ivy Kids kit, you will indeed see a fair number of pieces of paper in the box along with the hands-on materials, craft supplies, and book. Some of the pages are your instructions.
But we wouldn’t classify the other pages as ordinary “worksheets.” The pre-printed black and white sheets are better-termed activity sheets, and they include such things as pictures or graphics to cut and glue, illustrations to “stamp” with included paint and a paint dot tool, and “find-and-cover” games that also use manipulatives on the page.
Some of the pages included in the kits are heavier and feature professional color printing.
These include the All About Blueberries fact board, which has full-color photos with facts about blueberries and a Blueberry Lifecycle Board featuring full-color “cards” kids can cut out and arrange in order of the plant’s life cycle. These have a sturdy “keepable” feel to them.
Learning goals and skills are listed
One of the things we love about the instruction pages is that learning goals and developing skills are listed for each activity. Your kids may sort items onto a pre-printed activity page provided in the Ivy Kids kit—but the learning goal reminds you that they’ve covered an important science/math concept: “using a Venn diagram to compare and contrast.”
In the kits we reviewed, there are activities with learning goals for counting, fractions, creativity, art, engineering, adding, comparing quantities, using ten-frames, building vocabulary, retelling stories, letter symbols and sounds, and more.
Clear instructions
Our suggestion is for a parent to read the directions to go with the activities ahead of sitting down with the child. This will help you get an idea of what-goes-with-what in each kit since there are 12+ activities in each box.
The directions are not confusing but may be harder with a child at your elbow who is impatient to get started. The directions are easy to refer to at each step if you need reminders as you’re working with your child.
We’d put it this way: if the kit seems a bit fiddly at first glance, then pick out one of the activities, read the easy instructions, and put your hands on the pages or the hands-on items for that activity. You’ll quickly be crystal clear on how to support your child when they do the activity with you. And then another, and another, and another—because the kits are chock full.
Full disclosure: we’re not crafty moms. We have wondered if that should disqualify us from homeschooling, but Ivy Kids Kits do help to make up for our weakness. We tried the crafts and were able to paint, glue, and put together the crafts pretty easily—a good sign for moms of 3-8 year olds.
Ready when you are
The hands-on learning exercises that come with the kits are exactly the kind of activities we’d like to say we could come up with ourselves.
Maybe sometimes we do manage to do that.
But with Ivy Kids Kits, we don’t have to plan ahead to have an interdisciplinary, hands-on learning experience for our kids built around a good book!
The kits, with their books and all their activities, are ready when we are ready to sit down and learn with our kids.
The books we read together become more memorable to the kids because of all the related activities, which extend the learning into math, science, engineering, art and more.
And, learning with Ivy Kids kids means we engage with our child as we explore, read, play, build and create. That means the learning experience is enhanced because it’s in the context of relationship. This is part of the heart of homeschooling right here: we’re learning together!
And yet—we parents don’t have to go shopping for chenille stems or print up learning sheets or scour the internet for a truly kid-friendly blueberry pie recipe.
We just let Ivy Kids bring all the bits and pieces and all the books and parts right to our doorstep every month.
If there is an easier way to homeschool meaningfully, we don’t know about it.
Visit Ivy Kids to see more kits.
