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A little while after moving to California and becoming a stay-at-home mom, I started looking for a nice subscription box for us to enjoy every month. I love the idea of subscription boxes because they bring joy to our doorstep every single month.
They also offer me and my son a wonderful opportunity to connect and enjoy some interesting activities together every time a new box is delivered.
I wanted to find a subscription box that was both fun and educational so I started doing some research. One day another mom recommended me to try the Little Passports subscription box. I checked out their site and their boxes seemed great for us because we love to travel and discover new places around the world.
I asked for some more opinions about the box and they convinced me to try it!
The first box arrived at our home in December 2016 and it felt like a special Christmas gift for us to enjoy. We continued to receive a box every month for more than a year. In January 2018 we enjoyed the last box from Little Passports and looking back I can tell that it has been an amazing journey!
Why I decided to write a Little Passports review
When I was thinking about starting our Little Passports subscription, I looked for reviews from other bloggers to help me make a decision. I found some helpful information on several blogs but most of them were written after testing just one box.
And I felt that I needed more than this! I wanted to find out the opinion of someone who had a long-term subscription and tried more boxes.
This is why I decided that I will write a post about this subscription box as soon as I will have enough experience with it to be able to provide a complete overview of it. Now, after 13 boxes and more than a year of being a Little Passports subscriber, I feel like it’s the best time to do this!
What is included in the box
We chose the Early Explorers subscription because it was the one suitable for my son’s age (he was 3 years old when we started).
The first box was awesome because it included a nice suitcase and my son loved it! We used it to store some of the items that we received every month and he was very happy to have his own collection in a lovely suitcase.
Also, the first box included a map of the world that was displayed on our living room’s wall for a year (until we moved to another house). The map was great for talking with my son about the continents and the countries on a regular basis.
Besides the map and the suitcase, the first box contained the items that are included in each of the monthly boxes:
- a letter from Mia, Max, and Toby (the characters of the series)
- a little activity book
- the Flashlight Adventure activity (one of my son’s favorite activities)
- a luggage tag
- stickers to add to the map (my son wanted to keep them in his collection)
- a postcard
- a small gift related to the monthly theme (these gifts always brought excitement and my son still plays with some of them)
Here are some of the gifts that my son liked: a stuffed dinosaur, a puzzle map, a microscope, a set of stamps, the CD with songs from around the world, the miniature landmarks.
My son’s opinion about the Little Passports box
We received the first box when my son was 3 years and 2 months old. By the time we ended the subscription, he was already 4 years and 3 months old. The Early Explorers box is designed for children aged 3-5, so most of the activities were appropriate for his age.
In the beginning, he wasn’t able to do all the activities from the activity book but he became better and better every month.
He loved the characters from the start! Mia, Max, and Toby became some of his favorite characters and he was looking forward to receiving a new letter from them.
He learned many things by doing the activities and speaking about each month’s theme. After doing the activities I always asked him if he enjoyed them and if he would like to receive new activities next month and his answer was a joyful “yes” every single time.
He was sad when we ended the subscription and he still plays with some of the items from the boxes and tells me how much he enjoys them.
My opinion about the Little Passports box
In my opinion, this subscription box has both strong and weak points.
What I liked about it:
– The materials were high-quality.
– The monthly themes offered me great opportunities to talk with my son about different countries and cultures. He learned many new things in a fun and playful way.
– We received the box (which is actually a big envelope) on time every month. We only had issues once when our box was lost on the way but they were very helpful and sent a replacement right away.
– My son was excited every time we received a new box and this meant a lot to me. We had a monthly subscription so I could have canceled it anytime but I had no reason to do this because my son really liked it.
– The content of the box offered us a chance to connect and do the activities together. The activities are not meant for young kids to do on their own so I was part of them every month and I liked it!
(This can be a disadvantage if you are looking for a box to keep your child busy without your involvement because Little Explorers doesn’t offer that. But if you like being involved in the activities, you will like it.)
What could have been better:
– The activities weren’t as “hands-on” as I imagined. They were great for teaching kids about the world and starting discussions on different topics. But they were more like a starting point for exploring different themes than a hands-on approach to them.
– I would have liked to find more activities in the monthly boxes. Some of the items in the box are just for collecting (like the luggage tags or the stickers) and although my son liked them, I would have preferred to have more activities to do with him.
My final conclusion about Little Passports
For me, the most important thing in judging a subscription box is my son’s opinion on it. We like to test many activities and is not always easy to find activities that he really likes.
But he liked Litte Passports and this made us continue our monthly subscription for more than a year.
If you wonder why we canceled it at the beginning of the year, the reason has nothing to do with the boxes themselves. I just felt that it’s time for a change. I wanted my son to explore other themes and approaches too so we switched to another subscription box for this year.
When my son will be older I would love to try their other subscriptions too (Wold Edition and Science Expeditions) because they seem interesting.
Is Little Passports a good choice for you?
There is no easy answer to this because every parent has different expectations from a subscription box. But if your child likes to explore new things about the world, Little Passports can be a very good choice.
In our case, receiving a box every month for more than a year was great! For my son, it was a nice experience and for me, it was a perfect opportunity to teach him many interesting new things.
My advice would be to start with a monthly subscription to see if your kids like it. If they do, you can switch to a 6-month or yearly subscription to save money and enjoy more boxes.
Check out all their products here.
Discount code for Little Passports subscriptions
If you decide to try a yearly subscription, you can get 20% off with the code EXPLORE. This means that you get more than 2 months for free so it’s a pretty good deal!
I hope that this review offered you the information that you needed about Little Passports. If you have any questions please let me know. Also, if you try their subscription after reading this, I would be happy to find out your opinion on it!
Your opinion will also help other moms take the right decision when choosing the best subscription box for their kids, so please feel free to write it in the comments.
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