If you are from Sioux Falls (or really anywhere for that matter) and haven’t heard of Bloom Boxes yet, you need to! When Andrea from The Speech Mom reached out to us to try one of her Bloom Boxes, we were so excited! I’ve seen them all over social media lately and have been wanting to try one!

A little about Andrea (Instagram @thespeechmom) – she is a mother of two adorable boys, Hank and Gus, and she’s also a speech language pathologist who has a passion for speech, language, feeding, and kids! I swear, Andrea is like a wonder woman, she does everything and is soooo knowledgeable! We’ve worked together on a social eating post with our four kids (see that post here) and it was a blast – so much to learn from her!

Andrea has recently launched her new venture – the Bloom Box, a monthly rental program enhancing child development through play. Choose one of the various boxes (over 20 options! And growing!), and it will be delivered to your doorstep with an activity guide to help target your child’s development!  Enjoy a month of play while your child develops language, cognitive, social, fine motor, and sensory skills! Then at the end of the month, you just ship it back with the prepaid shipping label and if you purchased the subscription, then comes another to your door! AMAAAAZING!

Ivy chose the cupcake bloom box to play with and it was above and beyond my expectations! All of the items in the box were in terrific condition and were great brands like Melissa and Doug, Learning Resources, and Hape. All of the supplies were very high quality, very well taken care of, and the box was very well put together! I was blown away! You can tell Andrea put a lot of thought into choosing items that would fit her vision!

Plus, there were SO MANY things to play with! I was expecting maybe just a couple of items to play with for the month, but no, the box was FULL with several different hands on items and about 8 different structured activity lessons to go through with your child. And that doesn’t even count the free-play that Ivy and Leo loved! I just let them explore with everything in the box at first, and they sat and played for an hour straight before I had to pull them away for lunch!

The description on the activities and on the box says for children ages 3-7, but I’m telling ya, Leo almost loved it more than Ivy and he’s only 22 months!! He was all about making cupcakes, using the mixer, and attempting to master the tongs! Which was hilarious :)

Ivy, on the other hand, really got into the activities and lessons and loved making the cupcakes and playing the “Cupcake Shop” activity. She would make her cupcakes for her store (there were pictures of cupcakes you could make for a price amount to give the kids ideas, but Ivy was all about being creative and coming up with her own creations!), then I would be the customer and come choose and pay for a cupcake with the fake money that was included in the box. I’ll admit, even I was having fun with her!

There were pink, brown, and white fluff balls to represent the flavors of the cupcakes (I’m a white vanilla fan!!! She was obsessed with pink, of course!), then there were little fluff balls to top the cupcakes off with candy or cherries or whatever you wanted it to be. So many options to get creative with your cupcake making!

There were also two other sets of cupcakes to venture into – these Learning Resources cupcakes that separate and you could match the shapes to the shapes in the pan, then also happy birthday cupcakes with candles that you could attach. Ivy sang “Happy Birthday” to all of us each with a different cupcake, so cute!

Plus, she had never used tongs before and she had so much fun trying to figure it out before she finally mastered it. A great skill to learn, I think I’ll start using her in the kitchen more! ;)

Overall, you’ve got to give the Bloom Box a try – you can purchase month-to-month, or do the six or twelve month subscription.  It’s so nice to know you have it for the month. I’d pull it out every other day or so and it was like a brand new toy for them each time! Plus if your kids are like mine, it’s nice just ‘renting’ these toys because mine get sick of theirs so fast before they’re on to the next thing. Great opportunity to give toys a try then ditch em when you’re done. Love that idea! Tired of so many toys around the house anyways! Love that you can have fun toys for a month, then move on to the next thing. Totally fits kids’ 2 second attention span ;) Haha.

Good news! Andrea is offering blog readers a discount – use promo code appleofmyivy for $15 off your box! Head to Bloomandlearn.com now and pick your box to get started!