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I can’t believe it has been several months since I brought a review to you by Constructive Playthings! This month we have been reviewing the Arts and Crafts Case suitable for children ages 4 and up. The Arts and Crafts Case is a box with 20 compartments or transparent drawers. Inside each compartment are different non-toxic art supplies that include popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, foam shapes, wooden animal cut-outs, pom poms, sequins, shaped confetti, foam letters and numbers, ribbon, feathers, different shaped buttons, yarn, glitter markers, googly eyes, craft glue, and acrylic paints. There are also drawer separators included so that more than one item can be housed in the same drawer.

We had some friends bring their daughters for a long weekend visit and they spent a few hours one night independently crafting and developing their own pictures and concepts using the materials included in the kit. They were entertained and had a great time experimenting with the different materials. It was fairly easy to clean up once they were finished by returning the leftover materials to their respective drawers.

The overall case itself measures 14¾”L x 6″D x 7¾”H and if you have an art space or art table in your home where the kids play than it won’t take up too much space if it lives on the desk permanently. The whole case could also be stored easily on a shelf in the closet or hung on a wall for use during your supervision, though be careful moving it, the drawers open easily. These are pretty standard art supplies available at most arts and crafts stores, so the compartments can be filled and re-filled once the materials have been used up.

There is an activity guide included with the kit that is a black and white pamphlet that gives a few simple examples of crafts that include collages, bookmarks and puppets. I do wish that it had pictures in the guide, as it is not very kid friendly, and children would have difficulty using the instructions. I know many of these activities are about the process and not the product, but for those kids and parents who need a little bit of motivation to be the creative type, pictures can often be helpful to use as a guide to spark a little more creativity.

This kit is priced at $47.99 and though it includes all of the materials pictured, in my opinion, I believe that the case is a bit overpriced for basic arts and crafts materials.

I did think of another activity that I thought of while using this craft kit was to make “word spacers” or a “space person!” Using a popsicle stick, children decorate the top of the popsicle stick any way they like. Then when school aged children are learning to write letters and space them on the line, they use their “popsicle stick space person” between the words to help judge the appropriate space!

One lucky reader in the U.S. or Canada will receive an Arts and Crafts Case by Constructive Playthings valued at $47.99!

Giveaway ends Sunday February 27th, 11:59 p.m. EST

1. Visit the Constructive Playthings Button on the front page of the ToyQueen website (blue with red writing, on the right side, 1/2 way down) and take a look around.  Come back here and tell us what other item a child in your life would love to receive. Remember that by clicking this button prior to any purchase you receive a 15% discount off your entire order.

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Constructive Playthings provided this art case to facilitate a review. The opinions expressed in this blog post are my own.