Please forgive the long post, but we’ve received our first Koala Crate, and the projects inside were fantastic! A year’s subscription to the crate was my gift to Travis for his second birthday, and I’m so excited to delve into a year of crafting and exploring with him.

This month’s theme was rainbows, and the crafts inside ranged from super-simple to a bit more involved. Travis needed my help with all three, since technically the crates are marketed to age 3 and up… but he understood the concepts and fun behind them!

You could easily pick up the materials needed at a craft store for a DIY version of all the following crafts.

First up was a cute rainbow cloud pillow, adding half-circle stickers to a felt cut-out of a cloud. I directed Travis to put the stickers on in rainbow order, and he surprised me knowing what should come next!

Not all of his stickers ended up in the “right” spot, though I hesitate to use the term. I corrected the ones towards the back, just so he could see that we were producing an arced rainbow. By the time we got to blue and purple, I left them where he placed them, slightly askew – it was his project after all!

He was fascinated by fluffy roving (filling) for the pillow and called it a cloud – how appropriate!

He very eagerly helped me stuff the roving in, and once our rainbow pillow was sealed shut, it needed a big soft hug

Craft #2 was a rainbow-dyed tote bag. If you have no Koala Crate, buy any small canvas tote bag, and do the steps below using tissue paper and rubbing alcohol, rather than plain water. Q-tips will work in place of a water dropper.

Travis loved helping get the bag wet under the faucet, but was slightly frustrated as we laid down the tissue paper squares, since the wet squares stuck to his fingers. I covered the remainder of the bag, and then introduced him to the water dropper!

This was a great challenge for little fingers. Although I needed to drip enough water over the squares to make an effect, Travis got in excellent practice making droplets onto a paper plate.

We left the bag to dry overnight, and then removed the dried tissue, revealing our colors. Travis didn’t quite grasp that it was our water droplets that had done the work, but we had fun talking about the colors – which were bright (blue!), which were very hard to see (yellow!) – and adding cloud stickers as the finishing touch.

The perfect size tote for a toddler to carry his toys to the car!

Finally, craft #3 was a “stained glass” window. Use clear contact paper, construction paper shapes, and tissue squares, if you’re not a Koala member.

The shapes provided were fun to punch out and add to the sticky “window frame.” I made a sun, and Travis joined a bunch of circles together and told me he’d made a cloud.

Once our black shapes were in place, we stuck on the remainder of our tissue squares – great fun!

Best of all was setting the “stained glass” up in our window, beautiful with light filtering through.

To finish our rainbow exploration, we made rainbows at home with two easy tools. A CD in a ray of sunlight produces a great rainbow against a wall.

A prism takes a bit more work, to find the perfect angle, but Travis had so much fun waving it in sunlight until he spotted a rainbow.

“I see it, I see it!” he would exclaim, and delighted in touching the colors on carpet and wall.

Stayed tuned for more Koala Crate adventures!