Little Hands Learning | Wildlife Heroes Kit

“A monthly subscription box, inspired by the magic of books.”

I know we are throwing it back to November’s Little Hands Learning box tonight, after sharing the Christmas boxes – but we really enjoyed this one and I just had to post it. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, since October, Alfie has been receiving the investigators boxes, aimed at children aged 6+. They are definitely geared towards him with a young reader/chapter book, with one or sometimes two focused activities and further challenges included within the instruction booklet. These can vary but there are always reading challenges, related to the month’s chosen book.

November’s kit was the ‘Wildlife Heroes’ theme – inspired by the book Polly Pecorino the girl who rescues animals. I’ll be totally honest and say we’ve not yet read the book – it’s on our list, though. Alfie’s got such a selection chapter books now and we’re working our way through them – we are currently reading the Lenny Lemmon book from October’s box (and he was bought the next in the series for Christmas). Perhaps, I’ll leave a mini review on Instagram once we have read it.

Back to the box now – our activity was to create a bird feeder – ideal for looking after birdlife in the garden over the winter months. We love feeding the birds and we had everything we needed to create an eco-friendly feeder: three pinecones in varying sizes, a hessian bag of suet, a hessian bag of birdseed and some twine (to hang them afterwards). All we needed to do was find a bowl and spoon and get cracking!

Alfie enjoyed the pouring and stirring but didn’t like getting his hands messy – a bit like our grotto experience at Dobbies. So, of course, I stepped in and helped combine the mixture before packing it into the gaps of the pinecones. The first was perfect and well filled, but after that, they looked more and more depleted! I then took them outside to hang them in different parts of the garden… and they went down a treat (hopefully not by the crafty magpies and collar doves, though).

Alfie then completed all the maths challenges in the booklet – there were three pages to work through. First, he had to count up the different kinds of bird and record the numbers for each… some were easier than others; we thought a couple were quite similar and got in a muddle (or at least, that’s what I’m saying – I didn’t have my glasses on). We ended up using different coloured crayons to differentiate them.

Once he’d done that, there were some sums to answer, using the birds. Alfie did so well answering the questions but did have to use a calculator for the multiplication. The final task involved greater than and fewer than, and he had to use those same numbers as before to identify whether the statements were true or false. He loves maths (and even goes to a maths after school club), so loved these challenges!

We’ve obviously still got the reading challenges to enjoy too! I think it’s such a good idea and a nice way to encourage younger readers.

The ‘Wildlife Heroes’ kit is still available online (£24) – or you can get the bird feeder mini-kit for £14. Like all the boxes, these kits are free of single-use plastics; postage and packaging are always included.

Remember to follow @littlehandslearninguk on Instagram to see the latest boxes, tips, and other educational activities.

Love, Lucy xx