I’ve reviewed Weekend Box before. Back in February 2014. I was fairly impressed with the activities in the box last time around, although did mention some disappointment that one of the activities, which involved making a bird feeder, didn’t have enough string to hang the bird feeder up.
I also mentioned that it would be nice if there was enough materials to make more than one of each activity – handy if you have two children and this would save you from buying two weekend boxes, although Weekend Box do offer a discount for a second box.
So after our last experience with Weekend Box I was keen to see if any improvements had been made and if the activities were just as fun and varied as last time.
It’s the same style box as last time which is great because it fits through your letter, it’s compact and can also be recycled.
Inside the box you’ll find four envelopes which contain your materials for each activity. Each envelope is a different colour and has a corresponding card of the same colour which tells you what you need to do for each activity.
Our Weekend Box had a theme of Chinese New Year. Our activities were:
Paper plate drum
Chinese Dragon
Chinese lantern
Fortune cookies
I like this activity because it’s so simple. Included to make this activity were two paper plates, one piece of ribbon, some small threading beads, lollipop sticks and some stickers.
The idea is to stick the paper plate together and decorate them with the stickers.
You’d then need to thread some of the beads onto the ribbon and attach the ribbon to both sides of the plate so that when you rotate the plate the beads hit against the plates making a sound.
The lollipop stick is used as the handle.
It’s great activity and both R and M enjoyed sticking the stickers on and threading the beads onto the ribbon.
As we have twins though and as I can’t imagine them sharing one paper plate drum, I decided to give them one plate each so that they could each make their own.
We simply poked a hole in the middle of the plates and pushed the ribbon through the middle which created the same ‘drum’ effect noise.
Overall, a great activity although I do think the length of ribbon provided could be a bit longer.
Making a Chinese Dragon
Personally this was my favourite activity!
The girls were happy to share this one because it was big enough for them both to make together. In this pack you get:
One piece of yellow card
One piece of red paper
Blue paint powder
Two lollipop sticks
Two googly eye
Glue dots
There’s also a small paintbrush provided.
I drew a dragons head and tail on the yellow card and then cut them out. I gave one of the girls the head and the other the tail before adding some water to the blue paint powder and letting the girls paint the head and tail.
Whilst they were busy doing this, I cut the red paper into two strips and then folded it back and forth creating a zigzag effect. I then taped the two pieces of paper together using some sellotape. The glue dots provided aren’t good enough to hold either the paper or the lollipop sticks together. A small roll of tape would have been better as the glue dots just went to waste.
R and M decided that they wanted to paint the red paper too!
We then stuck on the googly eyes and lollipop sticks using some tape and left our Chinese dragon to dry.
The girls were pretty pleased with the results!
Chinese Lantern
This was another fun activity for the girls and a pretty easy one at that!
All you need is an empty toilet or kitchen roll tube. Provided in this pack was glitter paint powder, glue dots and one sheet of sugar paper.
Simply add water to the paint powder to turn into paint and then let your little ones paint their tubes.
Once dry simply cut the sugar paper into a strip which is to be used as a handle for the lantern.
You can create slits by using a pair of scissors for added decoration, but R and M were happy with their lanterns as they were!
Fortune Cookies
We haven’t done this one yet, but it sounds fairly easy like the other activities so we’ll be sure to do it at some point
Overall Thoughts
I like the idea of Weekend Box and I think that the activities have been well though out, but I do wish with some of the activities that more material was provided, such as a longer piece of ribbon.
Overall though we were very happy with our weekend and enjoyed each activity.
For the purpose of this review we were sent one Weekend Box. All views are 100% my own.
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