Kid's Night In Box - Finance Club (& Ice Cream!)

For the last two months my husband and I have been trying out the Date Night In box from Night In Boxes, you can revisit those posts here and here if you missed what they are all about. This past month though, I was excited to try out the Kids Night In box…yep, made just for kids! For my family, this box seemed to have worked a little better for our lifestyle as I am home ALL day with my kids and have the freedom and availability to do projects with them whenever. My husband works long days and doesn’t get home until late so by the time we got to the Date Night box, we were rushing!

The Kids Night In Box includes everything you need to spend a day/night with your kids, and have fun learning while doing it. This month’s theme was Finance Club, featuring topics about money, earnings, investments, and interest (all depending on age of course!). The “project” was making ice cream! The box also came with the book “If I had a Million Dollars”, and as a teacher….I LOVED that it came with a great educational book!

What’s Inside?
date night itinerary*
play money (coins & bills)
2 small cups
2 wooden spoons
sugar packets
salt shaker
container of vanilla extract
1 large & 1 small Ziploc type baggy
Book about the topic
*within the itinerary there were learning games, the ice cream directions, & a kid friendly menu

Kid’s Night In Finance Menu
Cheddar Sliders
Mini Vegetarian BLTs
*as with all Night In Boxes, the menu includes a shopping list and the directions for preparation.

My boys really aren’t into burgers, so we did a variation of the BLT. We left out the avocado and romaine that the recipe called for and added bacon and cheese. So basically, they had a BTC…if that’s even a thing! My youngest went right for the tomato—which by the way I had no idea he liked, and my oldest pushed the tomato aside. Because kids can be so picky, making the menu your own like I did is always an option. I served their sandwiches with baked beans and applesauce on the side.

The included book is very long, so my husband had been reading it over the course of a few bedtimes, and that is perfectly fine for a 4-year-old. An older child might be able to sit and take in the whole thing at once, do what works best for your family, and revisiting the book during the lessons is a good idea too.

The foundation lesson is broken into 2 matching games based on age. We chose the game “for the little ones”, which was matching pictures of the coins to their words. My son can’t read yet, but he does know his coins and letter sounds so when he told me the top coin was a penny, I asked what letter penny started with and he was able to match it to the correct word by just knowing the first letter. For older kids, they have to match the picture of the coin to the amount, the dime matches to $0.10, and then adding up some pocket change at the bottom. The money songs on the next page are too cute and we could listen to them on the website. My oldest loved the Ten Pennies one!

After eating their BTCs (I’m definitely making this a thing), we moved on to the ice cream lesson. Since my kids are so young, I didn’t go into too much detail with the money, but I did tell my son that in order to make ice cream, we needed to buy the supplies. I gave him some of the play money and charged him for all of the supplies. For the milk, I asked him to pay me $5, and he handed me a $5 bill, the sugar was $2 so he needed to hand me two $1 bills, etc. He had a lot of fun doing this part, but it was probably because he knew what was coming next…making the ice cream! If you’ve never made ice cream at home with your kids, you should try, it is totally fun and yummy! I do want to add that the booklet was missing the actual how-to directions, but customer service was 100% on it and sent out an email with the directions to all who were to receive the box. Can’t go wrong with great CS! The booklet/itinerary also includes variations for the ice cream recipe, even for DAIRY FREE or those stubborn chocolate lovers like me.

Now, just a heads up because even though I have done this before, I totally failed and poured the SALT into the milk. Seriously. Can you imagine if I hadn’t realized it? We would have had to add some caramel, haha! But Night In Boxes DID send Sugar in the Raw so it was brown, which should help most people not make such a gross mistake. Once I dumped out the salty milk, we started over and made it the correct way. My oldest was really confused as to why I told him a bag of liquid was ice cream. “But where is the ice cream?” he kept asking, so I put a little science into the lesson and told him we had to turn a liquid into a solid…oh hey there states of matter! Both boys enjoyed shaking the bag, but when they tired of it I put in the work. Another tip, I double bagged the smaller ice cream baggy AND the gallon baggy just from prior experience and bags getting holes from the ice or salt.

Once the ice cream has solidified, scoop it into their decorated cups (another part of the fun of creating your own ice cream shop), and let them pick the toppings. My kids added colorful sprinkles. The best part was that there was a little left over that didn’t fit in their cups, so I got to enjoy a bit as well. Once bath time rolled around, I talked a little more about the ice cream we made and how earning money is important for owning a shop. I then asked my oldest how much he would charge people for his homemade ice cream, he started high at $10, but eventually with more discussing he got down to a more reasonable $2. He wanted to name his ice cream shop Super Salad Ice Cream…he is a little obsessed with eating salad, but when I told him people might not like salad in their ice cream, he decided Super Sprinkle Ice Cream would probably be a little better.

This month’s Kid’s Night In box was totally fun, some bigger concepts that we really didn’t touch on because of age, but overall, we all enjoyed it. I love that the box came with a book related to the topic, and that there were age appropriate activities in the itinerary. Once done with all of the lessons, the box can be turned into a piggy bank for kids to start saving their own money. Ready for a fun night in with your own kids? Click my affiliate link here to get started!

*I received this Kid’s Night In box for free in exchange for a review, all opinions are my own. This post does contain affiliate links, which means if you click on them and purchase your own Night In Box, I may make a commission.