Recreating Lovevery in Canada: PlayKit 1
By: Nicole Armos
Tags: Baby Products, Montessori, DIY, Lovevery

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When I first bumped into Lovevery I was entranced! Beautiful, simple, and thoughtfully curated boxes at a fairly reasonable price. Their excellent online resources became a gateway to learning more about Montessori parenting, which has truly changed my life (another story for another time). However, because I became interested in more authentic Montessori materials I started exploring whether I could “hack” some of the Lovevery kits to get more of what I really wanted at each stage.

I will be posting a 6-part series offering my review of each 0–12 kit in comparison to equivalent material from (primarily) Canadian shops*. As a point of comparison, each Lovevery Playkit costs approximately $97 CAD (before tax) if purchased individually, or as low as $87 CAD if you pre-pay for a whole year.

Right off the bat, key advantages of subscribing to Lovevery include the ease of shopping from one place, with no added shipping costs or fluctuating prices. Curated boxes come to your door every 2 months without over-thinking it. You also get the excellent Playguides and Montessori-aligned baby books (few words, real pictures, no fantasy!)

However, re-creating a kit can save you up to $300 in the first year, especially if you DIY, or take advantage of skipping items you are less interested in. Despite the extra work involved, hacking and buying locally or secondhand can also be more environmentally friendly. This guide can serve as a starting point, with endless possibilities as you curate your own fun!

The Looker Playkit, 0–12 weeks

Recreate for $9–$108

$9 plus cost of DIY materials for the cards and mobile (skipping the mittens, and heading to the library for a book!).

Up to $108 if you don’t like DIY’s and you do want the mittens.

Out of all the Playkits, this is the one I’d most recommend hacking, especially if you are into DIY’s. You can save a lot of money, and focus on more authentically Montessori material to serve the developmental needs of your newborn.

You can make your own black & white cards using these free printables on cardstock or laminating prints. Alternately, for a quick fix you can spend $20 for a ready-made pack of 40 images. To display without the card holder, either stick them to a wall or play gym bars, slip them into a photo album sleeve or use simple frames to display them at eye level for your infant.

Wooden books are hard to come by, however they are not essential — a newborn is unlikely to handle the book itself much anyways. Board books can do the trick for as low as $10 (or free if you swing by the library!) My favourites include Tana Hoban’s Black & White, Peter Linenthal’s Look Look, or for a uniquely local twist, Morgan Asoyuf’s Black and White featuring Indigenous art from the Pacific Northwest Coast.

The kit comes with a teether, and the sky is the limit with those. For a Montessori-aligned option that avoids repetition with future Playkits, you could consider these baby teether rings with wood and silicone ($14), the classic Montessori bell rattle ($9), or my own baby’s favourite, the Haakaa silicone flower ($16).

Montessori principles generally advise against the use of hand mittens (in order to promote sensory exploration and freedom of movement — even for newborn fingers!), but you can find black-and-white striped versions for as little as $12.

Finally, the mobile. Lovevery’s is beautiful and is a unique twist on the key goals of Montessori mobiles — leveraging newborn’s ability to focus on black and white, with the option of introducing primary colors as they grow. You could likely DIY using cardstock and paint. However, you could also upgrade with one (or more!) authentic Montessori mobiles by either making your own, purchasing a DIY kit with prepared materials for $23, or buying it ready-made for $50. You can even use your savings to splurge on a whole set of Montessori mobiles with a $76 DIY kit or a $127 ready-made set.