Purple Bee: The purple cow of activity boxes?

I don’t know if the name was inspired from Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow‘ but you had me there. 🙂

Purple Bee makes activity kits for children of parents, who don’t really have a lot of time or energy to put together structured learning opportunities for their kids. I’m a huge believer in the effects of unstructured play and in how boredom is awesome for the little ones because letting kids explore things on their own is perfect. I’m also an equal believer in structured learning and a healthy balance between the two. Which is better – fruits or veggies? Structured play or unstructured? A healthy balance of the two.

Full Disclosure: This is not a paid review. I was lucky to win The Sound of Music kit in one of their giveaways. Winning giveaways is such an awesome thing, I know, and is sweeter when its about products you are so much into. Unrelated note: The Sound of Music was the earliest movie I remember watching at home with my parents (for someone who never watches movies with parents). I LOVE every.single.song and probably have watched it a million times and hummed ‘Favorite things’ every time I opened a brown paper wrapped package or heard thunder or see raindrops on roses… like a zillion times. As a matter of fact, I’m listening to it right now. I wonder if my LO’s generation would like such movies – my guess is – No. let’s see. I digress.

Back to my purple bee kit and the activities it contained. The set of 6 activities came in a sturdy, colorful box. Each activity was contained in a separate folder with instructions.

Tambourine craft: Kids paint, stick glitter stickers and make a colorful tambourine craft. A well thought of kit, this one is – complete with glue and paint and brush.<3

I SPY board game: The game comes with 50 instrument cards and a board. AZ had much fun identifying the little instruments he knew.

Clapping clown puppet: The kids make a clapping clown paper puppet

Music fun doodle: Color a Music themed doodle that can be sent as postcard.

Story cards: Set of 25 laminated Music themed story cards. Kids pick up cards and come up their own stories based on the picture on the cards or parents can narrate stories to their kids. Improves creativity, vocabulary and communication.

Worksheets: A set of 20 worksheets to help you quickly engage your kids. Sheets are based on music theme and focuses on various skills like math, language, motor skills.

So far, we have used the I spy game board, the story cards and clapping puppet. As AZ is not 2 yet, the kit has been used quite minimally – but I’m pretty sure we’ll be reaching out to book more of these themed boxes when he is bigger and can have the max utilization out of these. The box says it is appropriate for ages 3-7, but I think it’s could be suitable for a little earlier than that as well. Be led by your child 🙂 I will update this blog again, when we re do some of the activities.

Pros:

Easy to put together an activity for time constrained parents – I could have an activity started in no time at all, since it’s all organised so well.
The common thread that connects all the activities lends itself to deep diving into topics that interest the child – in this case ‘music’.
The ability to reuse the given activities in different ways – For eg.,. using the flash cards to play a memory game and such.
Easy on the pocket. It is priced at 990 rupees. You can get it for lower if you take a subscription.

If you are looking for a support group for early learning and parenting, join Early years – A parenting lounge, a group run by the Purple Bee folks which shares very helpful tips and introduces you to a whole world of things like konamari et al.

Kids learn different things from structured and unstructured play. Make sure they have lots of opportunities to do both! For the former, you know where to go. 🙂