Need a Family Gift? Try This Time-Tested Subscription Box

Lindsay Schlegel recommends Cooper and Kid, a subscription box designed to promote family togetherness.

Gift giving can get tricky in a larger family. You want to make sure things are sort of balanced among the kids, and at the same time, you don’t want to buy something just for the sake of buying it. Experiences are well-received in our home, but we have a ten-year age range, so something that makes sense for the older ones doesn’t always play out very well for the littles. The same can go for magazines and subscription boxes — gifts that seem to keep on giving! Sometimes we need to pick one version for the big kids and another for the younger ones. Family gift turns into family gifts, plural.

That said, we’ve enjoyed our share of subscription boxes in the past (Kiwi Crate, Crunch Labs, Hack Pack). With each, from the get-go, we had the understanding that for the duration of the deliveries, either the box was to be used only by kids in a certain age range or pairs of kids would alternate completing the activities as they arrived. We knew going into them that they weren’t designed for five sets of hands to work on at once.

Cooper and Kid, which has been around since 2012 but only recently landed on my radar, takes a different approach. Their “field trip in a box” contains not just one activity, but a series of activities the whole family can work on together.

Filled to the Brim

Each box is themed and has a storyline connecting the activities. I was surprised to see how full our box was — and delighted by the excellent pair of cardboard scissors that came with it.

If you really wanted to, you could complete the whole box in a day, but it would be a lot! It took my kids a couple of sessions to work through the crafts, games, and spiral-bound guide. Ideally, parents are involved along the way, and I worked with the kids at certain points. However, my older boys (ages 15 and 13) are skilled and experienced enough to serve in the role of the adult.

The sample box we explored was called “The Burglary: An Insect Picnic Heist.” We learned fun facts and explored themes relating to teamwork. We did nearly everything the kit suggested. There were two activities that would best be completed outside, and the foot of snow we had at the time made them more of a challenge than I was ready to commit to! I put them away until spring when we may well try again.

The first box ships when you make the purchase, and thereafter boxes ship on a quarterly schedule — that is, in March, June, September, and December. (So you probably don’t have to worry about weather being a factor.)

Let’s Call It Faith-Adjacent

The content of the box was not faith-based, but there was no questionable subject matter or philosophy. The website indicates boxes encourage social emotional learning, which can be a red flag for some conservative families, but the term can also be used to mean character education. Our box looked to promote teamwork by identifying and celebrating individuals’ strengths to achieve a common goal. The primary focuses were on nature, in which we can see God’s glory, and on science, in which we can delight in our ability to observe and draw conclusions. These observations are my own, but I don’t think they’re much of a stretch from the content provided.

CEO and founder Nichole Smaglick told me via email that while the company is secular, it is “compatible with the Christian homeschool teachings.” If you’ve been to a Christian homeschool conference, you might have seen their booth! Smaglick continued, “Of all the wonderful things that Cooper & Kid has brought my family, the most profound has been our research on the character development and emotional skills. It has helped not only our children grow up, but also my husband and me, and our homelife has been better for it! Character development certainly is a lifelong process.” Her team combines “best practices in the world of psychology and child development” with “tips from our experience as parents and educators” to create a product that benefits the family as a whole.

I’m a big fan of family gifts and found this to be a great option. Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, godparent, aunt or uncle, you might find that giving a family gift like Cooper and Kid is less stressful on your end and more fruitful for the kids in the long run.

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Copyright 2026 Lindsay Schlegel
Images: Cooper & Kid