Tag Archives: Books

Science Saturday: Crunchlab’s Creative Kits

My kids found Crunchlabs on youtube and then nextflix, and my son really wanted to get a hack pack subscription for Christmas, which made my daughter really want to try their creative kits, so we got those as well.

We have now received and worked through the first two creative kits, and Sasha was able to do them entirely by herself!

Crunchlabs Creative Kits

The creative kits are simpler and a bit more like art projects vs engineering and robotics. They still do teach how to build and follow complex instructions to complete the project. Overall these are closer to many of the kiwi kits we have done in the past, but they have such good instructions and videos that Sasha was able to do these kits without needing a bunch of help from me.

Treehouse Kit

Our first kid was the Treehouse kit. Oddly enough they made a mistake and sent me 2 creative kits not one creative kit and a hack kit (they fixed this and we got our hack kit). So we had two treehouse kits, but Theo was pretty excited to do the kit as well. They both worked on theirs together and helped each other name their squirrels and design slightly different houses.

Ice Cream Stand

This was the the Ice Cream stand. We didn’t get two of these as they fixed the mistake, so we played a board game that was a bit to old for Sasha, while she built her creative kit. Other than helping after one piece was put on backwards she built the entire kit herself. She really enjoyed it and was engaged in the process and she likes it even better than the treehouse. She has been taking ice cream orders around the house ever since. She even got the treehouse back out and played with the treehouse and the ice cream shop and the little animal characters together.

Verdict

The creative kit is a hit and probably works well for kids 4-7. After that they might be leveled up to the next one.

The list of pro’s and cons is similar to the hack pack.

Pros

  • This is one of the highest quality toy build kits I have had
  • This has great videos, tutorials, and support
  • The programming and hacking was very cool and fun
  • The kids have enjoyed playing with this a good deal and are excited for the next kit

Cons

  • kind of expensive
  • not sure of long term re-play, but so far so good

Referral Code

Since we like these I am happy to share my referral code if you sign up we get some free credits.

Reading while traveling

A Tuk Tuk taking us through Angkor city
A Tuk Tuk taking us through Angkor city

I have enjoyed to read while traveling for a long time. It fits in well with travel schedules and being away from easy access to media, but more than that I enjoy reading books themed to where I am traveling. We had quite a bit of time to read through some books while we were on planes, buses, trains, trucks, ferries, and tuk tuks. I wanted to share my reading list from our latest journey. I got through 14 books while we were traveling for about 5 months, not bad!

group_tuk_tuk
with friends tuk tuking through Cambodia

 

I know I will have far less time to read as I return to work. I do want to try to keep up with the habit so, I was motivated to sign up to goodreads reading challenge for the year. I am shooting for 18 books in 2015. I have a few in progress which should help me get there.

Beyond books I read a lot of long form articles some of the best I hope to share in a later post. I think a good mix of books and smaller articles is a nice way to keep current and dig deep. Anyways without further ado, my book list.

Sci-Fi Books

African Books

Asian Books

Other Books

Books In Progress