Flora, Alan and I were very lucky to trial a brilliant new kids monthly subscription box from Mud and Bloom* last month. Now it’s time to see if February’s box is equally as fantastic!
About Mud and Bloom boxes
If you didn’t catch our January review, here’s a quick recap. The boxes arrive addressed to your child through the letterbox at the beginning of every month. They include at least two seasonal activities: one gardening and one nature craft – along with instructions, quizzes, and games. All this is aimed at teaching children about the seasons, plants, insects, birds, soil and rainfall. Everything you need is provided – instructions, seeds and even compost, so you don’t even need to have your own garden.
The boxes are aimed at 3-8 year-olds and the activities have been created by qualified teachers. They support the EYFS, KS1 and KS2 national curriculum, with influence from Forest School, Montessori and Steiner education.
February's box
So, let’s see what this month’s box contained:
instructions for growing cherry tomatoes (organic seeds and compost pellets provided)
instructions for growing basil (organic seeds and compost pellets provided)
some acrylic paints, a paintbrush, and tips for painting pebbles
a fact sheet and things to look out for in February
a checklist of flowers to be seen in February
and a quiz.
Tomatoes and basil
We eat cherry and baby plum tomatoes like sweets in this house and I use basil all the time, so these were great seeds to get.
After gobbling some fromage frais, we washed and punched some holes in the bottom of the pots. Then we put the four organic peat free compost pellets in some warm water.
WOW! they grew so fast, it was amazing! I wish I’d taken a picture of the dry pellets (like a thick 10p piece) because once they’d swelled up they looked completely different.
We put two tomato seeds and a pinch of basil seeds into each pellet and covered them over. Then we put them on our window ledge to wait for germination (10-14 days, hopefully) and covered the basil with plastic as it needs warmth. And, if you look closely, you can see that one of our avocado stones from January has started rooting, YAY! (I turned it upside down for this photo, the root’s back in the water now).
Painting pebbles
Flora never needs an excuse to get her paints out. Our driveway is full of Cotswold Stone gravel, which are – handily – a great size for painting.
This was an activity that she could do all by herself: choosing, washing, drying her stones and then decorating them. With no interference help from me, this was easily her favourite activity in the box.
Facts, flowers, and quiz
The Nature News sheet was full of fun facts again this month – did you know that birdsong amps up this month as birds start marking out their territories? Flora was delighted to get all her quiz answers correct again J And she could tick off seeing all the spring flowers in our garden, except for the aconites, which she’s seen at school.
Will we be subscribing?
Flora has absolutely loved the activities in the last two boxes and we’ve really enjoyed spending time doing things with her that don’t involve any kind of electronics. As I mentioned last month, I think these Mud and Bloom boxes are a brilliant way of getting the whole family involved in and learning about nature. And for only £7.95 including UK P&P, I don’t see how you can go wrong. So, yes, I don’t think there’s any doubt at all, we’ll be signing up! And I’m also thinking about getting a gift subscription for her cousins in Scotland, so they can compare notes. Massive thanks again to Anja Ffrench of Mud and Bloom for letting us trial these first two boxes, we’re really excited for our March box now!
If you weren’t tempted by our review of Mud and Bloom’s January’s box, then I do hope that our review of February’s box has changed your mind!
* We were gifted this February box for review but all opinions and photos are our own and this is an honest, unbiased review.
By Lisa McLachlan, Resident Blogger of Fabulous Frome.
You can also find her at: www.lisasnotebook.com.