Kiwi Crate: Dancing Robot

I was featured in an ivillage piece on activities you could do with recyclables. Kiwi Crate was also featured in that same article. A day or two after it was published online, Kiwi Crate had contacted me praising Nerdy Science and offering me a free sample crate. I knew J was excited about our magnet detectives activity we had planned for the park the following week, and the moving Robot Rally crate seemed pretty sciency.

Kiwi Crate is a monthly-subscription activity kit, based out of the Bay Area. What we loved is that everything we needed to complete their activities was included in the one box (even kid-friendly scissors and a glue stick). I didn't tell J about it, but I let him be surprised by the nice green package on our doorstep. He was super excited the day it arrived!

We immediately opened it and got to work. The activity crate came with a tin, some popsicle sticks, wooden block, and double sided poster hanging tape to attach the robot parts to the body of the robot. It also included a magnet wand, a piece of cardboard, and a maze.

J with his robot arm

The magic behind the Robot Rally is that a simple tin (like an Altoid/mint box) is attracted to magnets.

The attraction is strong enough that the magnet sticks to the tin through cardboard!

When you place the magnet under the cardboard and the tin on top of the cardboard (above the magnet), you can move the magnet and see what happens to the robot tin on the top.

Kiwi Crate included a few mazes for the robot to follow, but J was most happy just seeing the robot dance (the maze frustrated him a little).

With our older kids who came to our first Science Saturday of 2013, Magnet Detectives, we showed them the cardboard + magnet trick, but we used pipe cleaners instead (much cheaper than mint boxes, especially at the last minute). Using the pipe cleaners, they created bugs and other critters and made them dance/move with the magnet.

Thanks Kiwi Crate for such a fun, learning activity!

Disclosure: Kiwi Crate sent me the Robot Rally crate as a sample crate. Opinions are my own.

--------------------

Edited 5/28/13: Kiwi Crate is offering friends and family discounts to Nerdy Science blog readers until June 3, 2013.

Edited 7/20/13: Deleted expired offers.