myHoopla is the first Australian box of its type. It's a children's activity box aimed at ages 3-7 which fits right in with my family as I have two boys who are 6 and 7 years old. They do have an intellectual disability which puts them at the lower end of the age range in terms of ability which was reflected in the amount of assistance they needed when creating the projects with the supplied goodies.
I prefer to let my children create something that reflects their current ability rather than "helping" to achieve a perfect result. A process over product mentality if you will. I did need to give a fair bit of help with these projects as otherwise we wouldn't have ended up with a recognisable project at the end, which would have made it difficult to show you the projects the box included. I received the sibling add-on version of the box which contained enough materials for both my children to participate. I highly recommend getting this if you have more than once child in the age range as they were both really keen to have a go.
The strength of this box was that everything needed to complete a project was pre-cut and sorted. We just needed to pull out the bag and we were ready to go. This would be outstanding for busy working families who don't have time to set up a complicated crafting activity.
This month's box was "Pirates" themed and there were three activities included:
Parrot Puppet
Making the parrot was very much a "hands on by the parent" activity. Threading the wings through the body was tricky for little fingers, as was working out where to place all the small parts that needed to be glued on. I ended up putting dots of glue on myself, which guided my small parrot makers as to where each part needed to go. All the parts were pre-cut and prepared and in an individual bag so set up was instant and the very minimal mess went back into the bag. My youngest son chose this activity to do first, he was excited by the bag of colourful feathers. Neither of them wanted to use their completed parrot as a puppet, they wanted to make them "fly". Much fun was had throwing them up in the air and letting them "fly" to the ground.
Hook Hand
I did this activity with my 7 year old and it was a pretty good fit for his ability level. He liked putting the glue on the cup and sticking everything together, especially the white "lace" part and putting on the stickers. He would have liked a few more stickers to stick (two were provided). A fair bit of adult help was required to understand the instructions, but he was able to do the actual construction without assistance. I found this tricky to photograph as the flash kept over-exposing the foil part. I hope my enthusiastic model makes up for it :-)
Treasure Map
The idea of this activity was to draw a treasure map for another family member to follow to find buried treasure (toy gold coins were included). The paper to make the map on came rolled up but once we opened it, we found it was cut into the shape of a map which was a nice touch. Being brown paper, the lighter coloured crayons provided didn't make much of a mark, but we managed. My kids were a little disappointed that the coins didn't have chocolate inside :-)
There was also a bonus activity of making Pirate Treasure Stones which was also shared on the My Hoopla website. We didn't tackle this one as I didn't have access to coffee grounds but I did appreciate that they included this free on the website so you can get an idea of the sorts of activities they include in the box.
Check out other bloggers reviews of this month's box:
None that I can find yet but it's only just come out.
