Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box {+Giveaway}

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

It is a craft box with 12 different activities to complete within 24 days before Christmas. And you know kids are kids. The moment my kids laid hands on the Spurbox, they did 2 activities in one go in an hour! So, you may time the craft sessions with your kids according to your own schedule.

Spurbox Advent

You may have read about our home-made Advent Calendar in the previous post. In a few of the advent activities, I included the kids’ favourite activity, i.e. Art and Craft. I love doing art and craft with them. When the elder kids were having exams, we shelved off all craft activities and life was kind of boring with revision, revision and revision. And now, with the school holidays, is the best time to do craft work together. Especially when the 2 elder kids are still interested enough to not label it as ‘boring’ and the youngest is old enough to do many crafts with minimal supervision.

We received the Spurbox Advent Calendar which comes in time for making our crafts as part of the Advent Calendar activities. Save me the effort to think of craft ideas!

What is the Spurbox Advent Calendar about?

It is a craft box with 12 different activities to complete within 24 days before Christmas. And you know kids are kids. The moment my kids laid hands on the Spurbox, they did 2 activities in one go in an hour! So, you may time the craft sessions with your kids according to your own schedule.

I realize that each pack of activity contains the craft supplies needed but not in entirety. Some common things like scissors, markers, glue are not included but most families with kids should have them ready in the house. I would actually prefer that Spurbox includes ALL the supplies needed just like some other subscription boxes have. However, this is a small thing, we have plenty of common craft supplies and we can live with that.

There is a piece of puzzle that comes with each activity pack. Upon completion of the 12 activities, we are supposed to piece the 12 pieces of puzzles on an A4 sheet with 12 boxes to reveal the picture. We are certainly looking forward to what picture it will be!

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snowman-in-a-cup
Activity – Snowman In A Cup
Christmas Tree Card
Christmas Tree Card

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Perhaps you may like to get one Spurbox Advent Calendar for your child or as a gift.

Each Spurbox is priced at SGD36.90 and if you order 2 or more, the price will be SGD28.

Do check out other activity boxes and more information over here.

Craft and Baking Classes

Apart from Spurbox Advent Calendar Activities, Spurbox holds craft and baking classes too! The holiday classes are held from 3 Dec to 23 Dec and they have regular weekend classes. We tried out 1 craft class and 1 baking class over 2 different days.

Magic Pocky Wand Baking Class

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 1.5 hours

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We had really lots of fun baking together and the best part is the recipe is sooooo simple and yet tastes sooooo good that I am going to do it at home during our Christmas Party!

Kids listening to instructions
Kids listening to instructions
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Squeezing dough

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Adding Sprinkles to Pocky Wands
Adding Sprinkles to Pocky Wands
Story Telling time
Story Telling time
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Making a small craft while waiting for Pocky Wands to be baked
Totally Yummy!
Tada! Totally Yummy!

Recipe

100g Condense Milk

4 TBSP Water

256g of Plain Flour

40g Butter

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 150C
  2. Mix condensed milk with water and set aside
  3. Then mix in the flour until it’s well mixed
  4. Add the butter and keep mixing till mixtures resembles cornmeal
  5. Mould into a stick and bake for 15 minutes, then spread melted white chocolate and sprinkle on top! Note that the white chocolate can harden pretty quick and do add the sprinkles as soon as possible

You can get the sprinkles from Phoon Huat, so I was told, and I am going to buy them to sprinkle on cookies and even ice-cream!

Santa Mug Pottery

Suitable for 2 and above (young children to be accompanied by parent(s))

Duration: 3 hours

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This was the first time we did pottery and it was not difficult for Master 4, but not without my supervision. Each of us was given an apron and a piece of clay. The friendly staff guided us step by step with rather simple instructions. Nothing too difficult to handle for kids.

pottery
Moulding the Mug Shape
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Helping Master 4 to cut the pottery
Drying the Pottery Mug
Drying the Pottery Mug
Are they cute?
Are they cute?

More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and Term Classes:

Spurbox Junior Gourmet classes cater to children age 2 and above. They are currently having chocolate logcakes and gingerbread house classes for the Christmas season. They have also rolled out CNY classes such as custard cookies and tangerine cakes. Each Junior Gourmet class is 90mins and children can also enjoy an interactive and engaging storytelling session, as well as a craft session. All materials are provided and accompanying parent(s) do not need to purchase a ticket. Ticket is usually priced at SGD40 per kid and SGD70 for 2 kids. More information on Spurbox Holiday Camps and term classes, do check out here.

If you really like their classes, they do have a Super Saver Pass promotion where children can attend any 5 classes at only $150, working out to be $30 per class, which I think is fairly reasonable if one or two parents are able to do it with the child FOC.

Giveaway Time!

Spurbox is very generous to sponsor 4 Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Box to 4 lucky winners! I thought this is really kind of them!

Steps to participate:

1) Leave a comment on the facebook post telling me what bonding activities do you do with your kids during the day time (if you are a SAHM) or after working hours (if you are a PTWM or FTWM).

2) Tag 5 friends along with your comment.

3) Sign up to follow my blog via email, please refer to sidebar of blog page. Do remember to tell me in the facebook comments that you have done this step so that I can look out for it.

This is a Flash Giveaway so that winners are in time to craft with their children before Christmas!

Giveaway ends on 12 December 2359 and will be announced on facebook and this post on 13 December.

UPDATE!!

Winners of the giveaway are: Grace Ng, Debra Li, Theresa Tay and Carol Lim! Congrats! I have your email addresses through subscriber list and the organizer shall contact you soon! Happy Crafting!

Further, the organizer is happy to give a 15% discount for individual CNY Craft and Baking classes! Just quote “CHRISTY“!

Happy Crafting and Happy Holidays! Ho! Ho! Ho! 🙂

Disclaimer: We were sponsored the Spurbox Advent Calendar Activity Boxes, Santa Mug Pottery and Pocky Wand Classes for the purpose of this review. All opinions are 100% mine. For working mums like me, the Activity Box is a great help for crafting with the kids without cracking my brains on craft ideas and craft supplies. So, I do hope you will find it fun too!

Book Bank at the Botanic Gardens + Paper Quilling Fun

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” by Marcus Tullius

Imagine bringing your children to the Botanic Gardens and reading books together on the lush greenery coupled with background birds chirping sound, taking in fresh air and enjoying a peaceful bonding moment on a beautiful day.

This is exactly what this book bank initiative is really about – to encourage a love of reading, and what better place than in our own beautiful Gardens.

If you are heading towards the Singapore Botanic Gardens, you should bring along a book that you wish to give away and visit the Book Bank outside the Gardens Shop at Tanglin Gate. Over here, you can drop your book and exchange for a book on the bookshelves to bring home, or simply donate some good books, or pick up one and read at the Gardens. But do remember to return it so that we always have the bookshelves full of books and not depleted to none. This is a meaningful campaign started by The Gardens Shop @ Tanglin Gate to cultivate a love for reading, especially among the little ones who visit the Gardens, as well as to make bonding time with the family more fun and rewarding.

Book Bank at the Gardens

For a start, these books are contributed by The Gardens Shop. We certainly have some good conditioned books that the kids have read and loved and we will be happy to share with others while in exchange, pick up new ones or preloved ones by others. Hopefully, the next time we visit the Gardens, this bookshelf will be so plentiful of books that it requires a bigger corner!

Art Pazzionate

As part of the initiative to kickstart the Book Bank at the Gardens, we were invited along with some parent bloggers to a Paper Quilling session together with our children. Little tables were set up outside the Gardens Shop. It was a perfect location to do crafts with our young ones. I have never known what is Paper Quilling until now. And after posting some of our paper quilling masterpieces on instagram, I realized that I have been missing out such crafts since my school days! Apparently, even my BFF made these 20 years ago!

Basically, Paper Quilling is really an easy craft work but yet it can produce amazing art pieces with endless forms of ideas and creativity. Continue reading “Book Bank at the Botanic Gardens + Paper Quilling Fun”

DIY Daiso wooden blocks fun

House

It has been a while since I last bring out the painting set and do some art and craft with the kids.

I remembered Mum in the making blog on Daiso small wooden blocks and decided to do something similar too.

I bought 3 sets of 12 blocks size 30x30x30mm ($2ea x 3), 2 triangular blocks ($2 x 2) and a wooden case to keep the blocks ($2).

Daiso blocks

I would highly recommend to use a sand paper to smoothen the edges and surfaces to protect little fingers before starting the below activity.

We took out our paint set, poster colours and acrylic paint to Continue reading “DIY Daiso wooden blocks fun”

Simple Craft – Paper Plate Art

It has been a long while since I last had a craft session with my kids.

I saw an easy paper plate art fish aquarium from Pinterest and thought I could make something similar with whatever materials I had at home. Hence, we did it one Saturday afternoon when the hubby was not around and the baby was sleeping. Perfect bonding time 🙂

Source - Etsy.com
Source – Etsy.com

You need these materials as basics and the rest are up to your imagination: Continue reading “Simple Craft – Paper Plate Art”

Art workshop review at Rush-Me-Not Art Studio

Do you know that Art can be therapeutic?  Have you heard that Art can help parent and child improve their communication? And how about using Art to solve behavioral problems?

To many of us, including myself, our view of art is drawing, doodling, colouring and painting on a piece of paper. The furthest attempt in appreciating art is probably to visit Musée du Louvre, in Paris to interpret whether Mona Lisa smiles or not, or marvel at Michelangelo’s unfinished Dying Slave. Continue reading “Art workshop review at Rush-Me-Not Art Studio”