Gear

Our 10 Favorite Gift Subscription Boxes for Kids

Don’t bank all your bucks on one big present. These monthly deliveries will have them thanking you all year long.

With erratic shipping times and unpredictable supply chains, buying holiday presents is much more difficult this year. That's why gift subscriptions for kids are genius. For an affordable sum, you can continue to surprise and delight the child of your choice for months to come—and they might also serve as useful, entertaining supplements for remote learning.

I tested gift subscription boxes on some of the most willing guinea pigs around—my kids and their friends—and these became our favorites. Hopefully, your children will enjoy these as much as ours did. Be sure to check out all of our other buying guides for kids, including the Best STEM toys and the Best Personal Tech.

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Updated December 2020: We added more information, removed older picks, and added a new one.

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  • crate full of crafts
    Photograph: KiwiCo

    The Best Box

    KiwiCo Kiwi Crate

    Kiwi Crates are the only boxes that I subscribe to for my own children. My 3-year-old son now receives some of the same themed crates that my now 5-year-old received at his age. Kiwi Crate offers a bewildering array of gift boxes for all ages and interests, from toddlers under 2 to teenagers. You can also choose boxes aimed at specific interests, such as music, mazes, holiday crafts, or robots.

    The sheer amount of stuff in gift subscription boxes can be overwhelming, especially for smaller children. That's why I particularly like Kiwi's careful curation and clear instructions that require a minimum of parent supervision—my kids can follow the drawings, even if they have trouble parsing the written instructions. We all enjoyed making glow-in-the-dark jellyfish and fireflies in a recent crate that gave everyone an excuse to stay up way too late.

    $25 at KiwiCo
  • Photograph: Amazon

    The Best Book Box

    Amazon Prime Book Box for Kids

    Amazon's Prime Book Box for kids takes advantage of Amazon's unparalleled access to thousands of titles. You can choose to have a box delivered every one, two, or three months, with age-appropriate selections ranging from babies to 12-year-olds.

    The hardcover books are selected by both customers and Amazon's book editors and are sold at 40 percent off the list price. I found their choices to be well written, with beautiful art. Both of my kids still like reading both of Amazon's selections in the 3-to-5 age range sample box.

    $20 at Amazon
  • Photograph: Michael Tjioe/Sago Mini 

    Best for Younger Kids

    Sago Mini Sago Mini Box

    From ages 2 to 5, my daughter loved playing with the Sago Mini apps. Each app features characters you guide in open-world exploration, like piloting a tugboat around the ocean. She liked that the characters were adorable, there were no rules or time limits, and the worlds hid fun surprises. Meanwhile, I like that there are no in-app purchases or advertising.

    Sago Mini's subscription boxes offer a different theme every month. When we first tested the boxes last year, they were too simple for my daughter. But a recent box on planes included play figurines, a world map, and a play camera, which spurred some interesting conversations on travel and geography—and gave my 3-year-old a bunch of fun toys to zoom around the living room.

    $19 at Sago Mini
  • Photograph: We Craft Box 

    The Best Craft Box

    We Craft Craft Box

    Crafting is the most torturous part of parenting for me. It encourages creativity and fine motor skills, and my kids can be entertained by glitter, tiny pipe cleaners, and crayons for hours. But purchasing, storing, and cleaning up after their various messes is a nightmare.

    A We Craft subscription box solves all those problems by offering crafts in small monthly themes that make containment and maintenance easier. They are not as STEM-oriented as some of our other picks, but they offer a tremendous amount of variety for an affordable price. Need more craft ideas for younger kids? Here are some for how to entertain your young children in lockdown.

    $30 at We Craft
    $24 at Amazon
  • Photograph: Bitsbox

    Best for Budding Coders

    Bitsbox Basic Box

    In the same way parents used to give their children tiny kitchen sets and toy hammers, many now present them with coding kits. Even if they don't grow up to become professional software engineers, a basic fluency with programming tools will undoubtedly come in handy.

    The Bitsbox is aimed at children who can already read and write. Following the instructions in the booklet, your child can create a simple app to use on any computer, tablet, or smartphone with a web browser (although younger children will probably require a lot of supervision). Most important, the apps are aimed to appeal to both boys and girls.

    $25 at Bitsbox
  • Photograph: Little Passports

    Best Science Box

    Little Passports Science Expeditions

    Little Passports caters to a variety of ages and interests, with an Early Explorers box aimed at children as young as 3. While the activities for younger children are adorable and engaging, the science boxes for older children are creative introductions to widely varied subjects.

    I tested the introductory kit, which was on forensic science. I don't remember learning anything about forensic science, even in high school, and had never extracted the DNA from a squashed strawberry. It was fascinating. I also very much enjoyed the Steve Spangler Science Club box, which had classic and vivid hands-on projects. You might think you could put together a simple marshmallow masher yourself. But do you have time to look for old soda bottles? No.

    $19 at Little Passports
  • Photograph: Girls Can! Crate

    Best for Feminist Role Models

    Big Little Ones Girls Can! Crate

    It's especially important for young girls to have role models in a variety of fields. While the Girls Can! crate does provide simple, fun, STEM activities for your 5- to 10-year-old, the boxes also highlight the inspiring, accomplished women who have worked in those fields.

    To be honest, the inspiring women hardly registered to my now 5-year-old, who tore open the box to start immediately drawing with the markers within. But later on, when she thinks of someone whose job is to look at the stars, she might think of a woman looking at a telescope as well as a man.

    $33 at Big Little Ones
  • Photograph: Raddish Kids

    Best Cooking Box

    Kids Cooking Subscription Box

    Unlike a meal kit, the Raddish cooking club box arrives in a small package with a shopping list, three recipes, a kid-sized kitchen utensil, and small themed activities. I cook dinner every night, and this week, Raddish let my 5-year-old join in.

    The menu was very child-friendly, in terms of both taste and food-prep techniques. Our sample box was themed Swedish Eats, with easy-to-prepare cinnamon rolls and Swedish meatballs on the menu. All I needed were common ingredients like flour, brown sugar, and ground beef that I already had in the house. It's not as convenient as some of our other picks, but it was one of the most enjoyable; my daughter has already asked if the next box will have a recipe for tacos.

    $24 at Raddish Kids
  • Photograph: Kiwico

    Best Baking Box

    KiwiCo Science of Cooking: Bread & Butter

    Kiwi Crate also recently sent us a baking kit that my 5-year-old declared to be the best gift box she's ever gotten. The kit included her own measuring cups, spoons, and squeeze bottles and let us walk through the whole process of baking bread, from watching yeast-created carbon dioxide fill up balloons ("We're eating fungi farts!") to making butter, kneading dough, and finally baking cinnamon bread for a snack.

    This did take a lot of supervision—it's not as if you can let a 5-year-old operate the stove by herself. But a great side effect is that she now has her own measuring cups and spoons and can stop stealing mine.

    $20 at KiwiCo
  • Photograph: Cricket Media 

    Best Magazine

    Cricket Media Cricket Magazine

    I like magazine subscriptions for the same reason I like box subscriptions—every week or month, something fun arrives in the mail that I didn't have to find on my own. Cricket Media is a classic publishing house. Since 1973, the company has printed several magazines for kids: Babybug is aimed at children 0 to 3; Ladybug and the STEM publication Click are aimed at children 3 to 6. (Cricket also has several other publications for children 7 to 14 years old.)

    I grew up reading Cricket magazine, so it's fun and nostalgic to read through stories and poems while following the tiny insect comic gallery in the margins. My kids also enjoyed the absorbing art, activities, and writing about things such as animals in their winter coats and different holiday traditions. Babybug is also published on sturdy, coated paper that resists tearing by little hands.

    $34 at Cricket Media
Adrienne So is a senior writer for WIRED and reviews consumer technology. She graduated from the University of Virginia with bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish, and she worked as a freelance writer for Cool Hunting, Paste, Slate, and other publications. She is currently based in Portland, Oregon.
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