Children love to explore nature and this box with DIY projects will help them learn more about the environment and teach them about different tools used to study the world around us. With Nature Box from KiwiCo the young naturalist will build a scavenger hunt box and make special tools to be used when exploring the great outdoors.

If you look inside the box you will see a scavenger hunt box, 3 dividers, a cord, 2 scavenger hunt cards, a sticker sheet, 2 sticky dots, a magnifying glass, frog box, 2 foam rings, 2 wiggle eyes, a measuring tape, 2 felt tongue stickers, clothespin, a notebook, 4 colored pencils, 3 rubbing plates, an instruction sheet and, of course, Imagine! magazine.

Scavenger Hunt Box

The first project in the instruction sheet is building a scavenger hunt box. You will need a scavenger hunt box, dividers, colored pencils, a cord, scavenger hunt cards, stickers and sticky dots.

Put one of the scavenger hunt cards in the bottom of the box. Make sure your leave the tabs folded upwards.

Assemble the dividers and put them on top.

Make a handle using the cord.

Put a sticky dot on the lid and stick another one on the white circle on the box.

You child can color the stickers and decorate the box with them. Now it is ready to be taken outside for a scavenger hunt! The box has two different scavenger hunt cards for you to switch. You can look for things that are depicted on the drawings or look for things of the same color as the squares. You can even make your own scavenger hunt card!

Discovery Tool

The project supplies include a frog box, foam rings, wiggle eyes, a measuring tape, felt tongue stickers, a clothespin and a magnifying glass.

Assemble the frog box.

Attach pink stickers to the gray end of the tape.

Push the measuring spot inside and fix it with the loop.

Secure the clothespin with the foam ring.

Stick on the wiggle eyes.

Use the clothespin as a handle to wind up the measuring tape.

Now you can use it to measure your findings outdoors. When you go to the park you can use the tape to measure any rock, flower or leaf. Also you can use a magnifying glass to view each item better.

Nature Notes

Every budding naturalist needs a notebook to record his or her observations about the nature. But the notebook from Nature box is really special as magic paintings tend to appear on its pages. Look! Just open your notebook at page 14 and hide a rubbing plate under it. Then rub a colored pencil over the paper and the nature painting will get revealed. Consider using different colored pencils to create new rubbings. By the way, the notebook is multifunctional. There you can also record your measurements of various findings, learn how trees grow and rely on your five senses to explore the surroundings.

To prevent losing your research tools it would be a good idea to store the notebook, and magnifying glass in the scavenger hunt box from the first project. Bands and dividers will help keep everything organized. 

In the magazine kids will learn about photosynthesis and play a fun game “Hidden in Nature”. There is even another DIY project how to make binoculars using simple supplies everybody has at home, like toilet paper tubes, scissors, ribbon, glue and stickers.

Overall, it may be said that Nature from KiwiCo is an excellent box to develop useful fine motor skills, have fun and learn a lot about nature around us. My son completed all three projects and he said they are all fun. He had some difficulty with the frog box, though, as this task requires a great deal of manual dexterity. So probably an adult supervision may be necessary for the frog box project. I can recommend Nature from KiwiCo to everyone with small kids aged 3+!