Are you looking for subscription boxes for outdoors lovers? If you know a family that's eager to spend time together in the fresh air (or one that needs a little prompting to get off the couch), the award-winning Think Outside Boxes monthly subscription service could be just what you need.
Why Subscription Boxes for Outdoors?
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Think Outside Boxes for Kids is a monthly subscription service for families with kids ages 7+. Each month, annual subscribers get a new box full of gear, an activity guide, and hands-on tips around that month's theme.
Our family has been enjoying these subscription boxes for outdoors families for the past nine months. Since we live off the grid in a somewhat remote area, it's important to us that we all learn the basics of wilderness survival skills. And the folks at Think Outside Boxes (Crystal and Justin Wren) make this easy.
Subscription Boxes for Kids Saves Time
These curated boxes include child-friendly outdoor gear and activities to complete with adult supervision. And if your to-do list is anything like mine, I'd rather spend my time learning WITH my kids instead of trying to put together my own box of gear and activities.
That said, we find each box a great "jumping-off point" in our homeschool days. We can do a deep dive into each subject if we want to. This was the case with the Night Box, which led to pursuing an astronomy unit study as part of our outdoor homeschool curriculum.
As a family, we work through the activity guides and read each month's reference cards. One of the things that impresses us as parents is how much WE learn right alongside our nine-year-old and six-year-old.
To date, we've received eight boxes. Read about the contents of each, and how we work each one into our homeschool schedule. (Note: please use the current Think Outside Boxes links in this post as the previous codes and links in our older posts have expired.)
When we get a new Think Outside Box, we add the items to the backpacks that came in the initiation boxes. Since we homeschool off the grid in a boreal forest, we spend a lot of time outdoors. And we find that many of the items in these boxes are perfect for our kids wilderness survival kits.
The Fire Box: Why We're Teaching Our Kids to Start a Fire
Our most recent box arrived the night before we were scheduled to take a road trip down through Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba (in case you're wondering, that's a 27-hour drive). So we took our latest Think Outside Box, the Fire Box, with us. And we had a great time working through the guide and building a fire without matches or a lighter.
In our world, being able to build a fire quickly and easily can make the difference between life and death. We live in Canada's subarctic where the winter temperatures routinely hit -40C or colder in the winter.
Our home is down a rough gravel path off a two-lane highway that ends where the ice road begins. The ice road is a road across the ice on the lakes and marshes. It opens for about six weeks each winter for transportation to and from the diamond mines in the Arctic tundra.
I believe in finding the fastest, simplest way to survive should the need arise. So as a family we pack lighters, headlamps, water bottles, hand warmers, etc. when we're outdoors in the winter. And I also want our kids to be confident in their survival ability should their first-line-of-defense items malfunction, get lost, etc. That's why we consider the lessons we learn with our Think Outside Boxes a critical part of our homeschool time together.
The FireBox - What's Inside
As mentioned, we packed up our Fire Box and headed down to Manitoba where we tried out the fire starter during a visit to dear friends. On a blustery Saturday morning, after a hearty breakfast, George helped Ava use the supplies in the box to start a fire in his firepit.
Here's what the Fire Box contains:
- Activity Guide
- Fire Escape Plan
- Burlap Fire Kit Bag
- cotton-based tinder pieces
- resource cards
- 9 kindling logs
- firestriker
- extendible pocket bellow
- tinder tin
- wax disks
- cotton rounds
I honestly don't know who loved this month's Think Outside Box more - the kids or the adults!
Give a Think Outside Boxes Subscription as a Gift Instead of Toys This Holiday Season
A subscription box for kids that helps families spend more time together outdoors makes a great non-toy gift this holiday season. Choose a monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription RIGHT HERE.
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