My Kids and I Tried Lovevery and Fell in Love With the Simple Versatility of Its Toys

Before I became a mom for the first time, I had an idyllic vision of my future playroom. I daydreamed about a (somehow always clean) arts and crafts area, a reading corner with a big fluffy chair, and toy shelves that contained just a few high-quality, open-ended (and aesthetically pleasing) toys.

My hopes for this sort of playroom were crushed (for the first time) on my baby’s first birthday when it became clear that his grandparents, aunts, and uncles had never received the memo about our desire for simple toys. The next blow came when he started to attend birthday parties that ended with a goodie bag full of plastic bits and pieces placed into his outstretched, anticipatory hands. Class party gifts, yard sale finds, and hand-me-downs that friends are glad to be done with have continued to populate our playroom ever since.

Still, though, I’m not a fan of clutter, generally prefer my kids to have access to more open-ended toys, and do feel an extra flutter in my heart when my little ones choose playthings that are actually cute. So, when I had the opportunity to try out a Lovevery subscription, I jumped at the chance.

Lovevery promises to deliver play kits filled with durable, high-quality, attractive toys that are engaging and developmentally appropriate for your child. I decided to order a kit for my two-and-a-half-year-old, who mostly has access to her older siblings' hand-me-down toys, to see what she (and I) thought. Read on to find out what we learned.

What Is Lovevery?

Loveveryis a toy subscription service that offers “stage-based essentials: for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers ages zero to four. While the kits are designed to be fun and engaging for tots, the toys and games they contain also serve to help them learn and grow.

An aspect of these kits that I found particularly appealing is that they appear to have a range of toys in each box that can be used in different ways and engage kids in different types of play. Because of this variety, you could end up with a complete playroom without ever having to shop for other toys. As a bonus, the toys tend to be visually appealing to parents without sacrificing any of their appeal to the children they are intended for.

The items included in Lovevery’s play kits truly are pass-down quality. They are organic, made from sustainable materials, and very durable. If you ordered Lovevery for one child, you would likely be able to pass down their well-loved toys to siblings or friends without worry that they are broken or damaged in any way. After touching and watching all my kids play with the toys we received, I am confident that I’ll be able to keep them in rotation for many years to come.

How the Subscription Works

Depending on your child’s age, you’ll receive a kit in the mail every two to three months. For babies ages 0 to 12 months, kits come every two months and cost $80 each. For toddlers and older children 12 to 60 months, kits come every three months and cost $120. While the cost of each kit is higher than some other toy subscription services, it breaks down to around $40 per month which is similar to the price of other options.

Lovevery offers a total of 22 play kits, six for kids 0 to 12 months and four each for kids in their second, third, fourth, and fifth years. Here’s a list of them including the ages they cater to:

Year 1 (ships every two months):

• The Looker Play Kit- For zero to 12-week-olds and includes sensory toys with high-contrast colors
• The Charmer Play Kit- For three to four-month-olds and includes toys they can explore with their mouths, eyes, and hands
• The Senser Play Kit- For five to six-month-olds and includes toys to help them strengthen coordination and practice language skills
• The Inspector Play Kit- For seven to eight-month-olds and includes texture, nesting, and stacking toys to help them learn about object permanence
• The Explorer Play Kit- For nine to 10-month-olds and includes toys and items that help teach balance and coordination
• The Thinker Play Kit- For 11 to 12-month-olds and includes toys that spark the imagination
  
  

Year 2 (ships every three months):

• The Babbler Play Kit- For 13 to 15-month-olds and includes toys to help promote time and routines as well as cause and effect
• The Adventurer Play Kit- For 16 to 18-month-olds and includes toys that help with grip strength and two-handed coordination
• The Realist Play Kit- For 19 to 20-month-olds and includes lessons in counting and toys that demonstrate how things work
• The Companion Play Kit- For 22 to 24-month-olds and includes toys that teach how to transfer objects as well as promote emotion regulation.
  

Year 3 (ships every three months)

• The Helper Play Kit- Includes Montessori-style toys that promote practical life activities
• The Enthusiast Play Kit——包括玩具,let your two-year-old explore geometric shapes and balance, and engage in pretend play
• The Investigator Play Kit——包括玩具,will help your almost three-year-old how to plan future tasks and challenge their memory and concentration skills
• The Free Spirit Play Kit——包括玩具,will give your three-year-old (or almost three-year-old) the chance to practice problem-solving and get deep into imaginative play

Year 4 (ships every three months)

• 《观察家报》打装备——包括玩具,encourage independence and self-care in your three-year-old plus exposure to architecture
• The Storyteller Play Kit——包括玩具,promote engineering understanding and include a play fort your three-year-old can play in
• The Problem Solver Play Kit- Includes toys to build your almost four-year-old's counting and game-playing skills
• The Analyst Play Kit——包括玩具,your four-year-old (or almost-four-year-old) can use to make 2D pictures 3D

Year 5 (ships every three months)

• The Connector Play Kit——包括玩具,help kids problem solve while also acting out new stories
• The Examiner Play Kit——包括玩具,encourage kids to make logical decisions and develop empathy
• The Persister Play Kit——包括玩具,help kids identify letters (and their sounds) and learn mindful breathing exercises
• The Planner Play Kit——包括玩具,help your almost-five-year-old learn how to think ahead and connect actions to outcomes
  

如果你好奇什么是包含在每个kit, you can see images and read about the items right on the website. There are no surprises—you know exactly what you’ll receive with each shipment.

Many kits (including the one I received) include a book, some sort of age-appropriate puzzle or sorting game, and then several toys that kids can play with in a variety of ways or that they can use to engage in their home life or the world around them. Kits also come with a parent guide that shares information about your child’s development and includes suggestions on how to engage with them during playtime.

Ordering and Receiving Lovevery

My experience with Lovevery started with trying to figure out which play kit my daughter would be most interested in. Since she was 30 months old at the time I ordered, I wondered whetherthe Enthusiast play kitfor 28-, 29-, and 30-month-old children would be too baby-ish for her. But I decided to order true-to-age vs. aging up.

进入h后er age and basic shipping and payment information, I received an email notification that my subscription was active and, within just a day, that my first kit had shipped.

Lovevery kits ship in a thick cardboard box that is durable enough to reuse if you want to pack up a whole kit as part of your toy rotation or to take somewhere with you.

When we opened the box, the toys were individually wrapped in tissue paper with a parent guide placed on top. While I picked up the parent guide, my daughter ripped right into the tissue paper and gasped with each toy she discovered.

The Toys We Received in Our First Box

Here are her and my thoughts on each item that came in our first Lovevery kit:

Scale and Pail Toy

The scale and pail system allows kids to balance different items and figure out which weighs more. It’s a good study in cause and effect, and very cute on our toy shelf, but my daughter lost interest in this quickly. After piling a few toys in one pail and then the other, she didn’t seem interested in the concept of balance or the act of weighing things and moved on.

Both of her older brothers (6 and 9) discovered this toy later, though, and have each spent many hours betting each other about which of their own action figures or coins will weigh more. When they started filling the pails with things like water, sand, and dry beans (goodbye to the lentil dinner I had planned), my daughter got curious and reengaged with the scale. My guess is that this toy is one that, while not immediately exciting to her, will be revisited again as she develops new interests and figures out new ways to play with it.

Picnic Tea Set

The picnic tea set was an immediate hit. My girl has already spent many hours setting up picnics for her stuffed animals and pouring water from the kettle into the cups. I also thought this set was cute and enjoyed her many offers to make me some tea or bring me a treat on the little saucers.

Glue and Paper Activity

这个活动介绍了孩子们的乐趣胶(without the mess) by inviting them to paste colorful bits of tissue paper using a small paintbrush-like glue brush. My daughter burned through this activity quickly, but enjoyed it mightily. She is not quite dextrous enough to use traditional wet glue properly, but seeing her enjoy this so much gave me some ideas about other craft projects she’s probably ready for.

Sort and Stack Peg Puzzle

虽然我认为这个难题将是一个小boring, my daughter enjoyed it and has played with it most days since we received it. This activity is the perfect level of challenging for her—it’s not so hard that it’s frustrating, but she does have to work at it; seeing her little face wrinkled in deep concentration has been delightful.

She spent one play session sorting the pieces by color, another sorting them by shape, and another working to place the holes in the “wrong” place just to get all the pieces onto the board.

Spray Bottle and Squeegee

The simplest toy is usually the most loved and this was very true of the spray bottle and squeegee included in the play kit. My girl audibly squealed when she saw the spray bottle and pushed a chair from our kitchen table to the sink to fill it immediately. She suddenly started washing windows and quickly expanded to other surfaces in and outside our house.

Though we did have to have more than one discussion about not squeegeeing her baby brother's head, this toy is and will likely remain a favorite of ours for quite some time. And, again, both of her older brothers have spent some time playing with this toy; they used it to wash (the bottom half) of my minivan during a study in mud-making and often ask their sister for a turn when she gets it out to play.

Nature-Focused Board Book

Our home has a fairly extensive board-book library, so I thought my daughter would be excited for a new book. But she showed very little interest in it when we first opened the box.

She tends to have favorite stories that we read frequently and has not asked me to read this one to her yet. However, I have noticed that it has quietly become one that she enjoys taking to nap or bedtime on her own. With vivid photographs that include lots of kids her age, she seems to enjoy “reading” it on her own. My younger baby also seems to like the images in this book and has spent more than a few story times patting the pictures of what are, to him, “big kids.”

Customer Service

I was curious about how responsive the customer service is, so I did use the chat function on the website to ask a few basic questions about the play kits and found that the reps were prompt, friendly, and helpful in their responses.

Since we only wanted to try out one box, I canceled our subscription after the order went through. This process was simple; I just clicked on the “Play Kits” tab under “My Account” and was offered the option to cancel. Overall, I found the whole process of signing up, paying for our order, receiving our box, and canceling our subscription to be intuitive.

Pros & Cons

I learned a lot when I tried Lovevery. Here are a few of the great and less-great aspects of using this toy subscription service.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I really liked my entire experience with Lovevery kits. I appreciated knowing what was in each kit and found the toys and games to truly be fun and engaging. While the kits are tailored to specific ages, I also felt like the toys and activities they contain won’t be outgrown too quickly. Many will still hold appeal or are flexible enough to be played with in different ways as my kids grow.

For parents who simply cannot afford a play kit subscription, finding lower-cost versions of some of the toys in stores is possible. And information about child development can be found online.

One tip that I would pass along to other parents is the idea of debuting the toys one by one rather than as a whole box. While my daughter was thrilled by the experience of opening a box full of toys, I think she may have benefitted from a slower process in which she could explore each toy a little bit more before feeling pulled to rip the tissue paper off of another. If we order Lovevery again, I will likely open the kit without my little one and offer the toys on a more staggered schedule vs. all at once.

I would recommend Lovevery to other parents, especially if they are building a playroom from scratch, have one baby or child and are planning more, or want to be very thoughtful about offering developmentally appropriate toys. My daughter loved the kits, I loved how simple the subscription process was, and I’m confident that the toys we received will get lots of play over the years to come.