M is for Monster: May Patterns & Monkeys

I was introduced to M is for Monster a couple of months ago and once life settled down for us, they sent me a box to check out. I’ve seen a lot of subscription boxes out there and was interested to see how this one would set itself apart. There are three levels of learning activities: Beasley/Level 1, Edgar/Level 2 and Newton/Level 3. The goal of the boxes is to help your preschool age children 2-5 learn at home, without parents feeling overwhelmed trying to come up with every activity themselves.

The story of how M is for Monster actually started resonated well with me. Mandy shares on the about page that when she just had one child, it was easy to keep up with creative activities and on top of learning for her firstborn, but once baby number two things got a bit more complicated. The goal of M is for Monster is to provide a resource to parents so they can still feel like they are on top of teaching their kids no matter where they are in the throws of life.

We chose the Newton/Level 3 box for A. She’s always loved learning and she’s a bit ahead of the curve, so I was interested to see if this would challenge her or not. The box arrived at the door and I was impressed with everything that actually came with it. Each colored envelope that you see above is filled with 4 activities, then there were additional books to read and tools that go along with it. Literally everything but a pair of scissors come in the box every month – you have to provide absolutely nothing.

I’m going to break up each box into two posts – two activities for each post, so that I can give you a really good idea of this subscription box. In fact, I liked it so much I signed up to be an affiliate. I think you’ll be just as impressed as I was once you see everything that comes in the box! Today I’m going to share the Pattern Activities and the Monkey Activities.

M is for Monster Pattern Activities

For the pattern activity segment it came with a book about patterns that can be read by itself or if you have counting bears or similar you can interact during the book like we did. It came with Popsicle sticks to work on pattern matching and pattern creating. Colored square blocks came in the package to work on making additional patterns. Buttons + an ice cube try were provided for even more pattern making. Lastly a couple of pipecleaners with a package of beads were provided for an another additional pattern activity!
During this segment I learned that I hadn’t done a lot of patterns with A in the past. She knew and excelled at the basic patterns but had a good challenge doing the longer more drawn out patterns. We went over a variety of patterns and talked through the harder and longer patterns that we came up with. I love that she’s up for a good challenge. Some of the activities were a review for her but they were an excellent review and we were able to customize the activities to challenge her!

During A’s learning activities we were able to customize some of the same activities to fit B’s needs too. The ice cube try activity was too easy for A so while she did the popsicle stick activity, B and I worked on a basic orange-blue-orange-blue pattern in the ice cube trays. This was great for color recognition and hand-eye coordination. When it came to the pipe-cleaner activity, they did that together but instead of patterns for B we worked on hand-eye coordination of getting the bead threaded onto the pipe-cleaner.

M is for Monster Monkey Activities

The monkey activities were a lot of fun and touched on emotions, silliness, creativity, and math. The fun book in this section is full of the alphabet and silly monkey actions! Through a variety of monkey activities, math skills are worked on and developed in a hands on manor. Through the Addition activity, you cut up the addition cards and the bananas. Then you encourage your little one to get the right amount of bananas for each number, then count how many they have total and then feed the monkey! The opposite happens in the plastic monkey game working on subtraction.

The more creative activities in this activity set were the emotions game and the rhyme. For the emotions game, you go through the emotions on the card and have your child pick the correct facial features to put on their monkey. The stickers are reusable so you can do this game again and again! For the rhyme, you create felt monkeys and sing 5 Little Monkeys. We had a great time building our monkeys as a nice creative activity and then using them again and again for the rhyme and imaginative play!

Our Final Thoughts

We are really impressed with what M is for Monster is offering!! You have a variety of activities based on your child’s learning level and the rest is provided for you. I’ll be back next week sharing the Boat and Picnic activities so you can see those too. I really like that most all of these activities can be customized to your younger ones like we did and can be used over and over!

If you are ready to check them out right away, they’re offering the April and May subscription box activities (combined into one box!!) for just $78 ($40 off!!) That makes it 32 activities for the $78 price through TODAY. Considering everything that comes inside the box, I feel like that’s an excellent value and will set you up with lots of activities for the summer!