Best Fort Building Kits For Kits: Indoor or Outdoor

Fort kits for kids are a great way to build imagination, creativity, get them moving, play independently, and so much more! It's easily one of our favorite indoor kids activities that we also bring outside! As avid fort builders, we've tested Lovevery, Kiwico, play couches, and picks from Amazon to determine the best fort building kits for kids!

Watch fort building kits review: Lovevery vs KiwiCo vs Amazon

KiwiCo Fort Building Kit Review

KiwiCo recently released their fort kit for kids and it's quickly become our favorite!

Kids as young as 2 years old can assemble the pieces – making it great for montessori families looking to encourage independent play.

Despite ease of build, the connectors are incredibly sturdy; yet flexible. The white pieces are made from an almost (possibly?) silicone material that's flexible. Meaning you can create 45 degree angles without needing a different style of connector. That's right, unlike most fort kits this one comes with only one style of connector – because it's the only one you'll need!

Aside from ease to sort pieces, it also comes with an easy to store canvas bag.

We've found the length of rods, diameter, and general build superior to other fort kits of this style.

Lovevery Storyteller Fort Kit Review

Lovevery's Fort Kit comes in their Storyteller play kit, which is all about social-emotional intelligence for toddlers and we're huge fans of it.

The fort kit is incredibly easy to assemble – almost too easy that some of the connectors and rods can fall out of in more unique builds. This isn't a deal breaker for us, and we used to like that the kids could disassemble and put it away on their own thanks to this feature. However as they got bigger and stronger, the fort fell over more so we didn't *love* this feature as much and found they could handle disassembly on harder fort kits.

Now what we *really* love about this fort kit, are the fabrics and claw clips to keep them on the fort. We use these items with every single fort kit we've tested – even with just every day play couches – and find them to get THE most use. Our kids have set up puppet theatre, a cafe, store, house, restaurant, igloo, and so much more using these items!

Additionally, this comes as part of an entire play kit of toys for toddlers with one of our favorite books, hand puppets, the coveted Lovevery mop, and an alphabet puzzle.

So it's really a toss up IMO. If you just want a fort kit, then KiwiCo probably wins, but if you want a full experience for your toddler, then Lovevery is a great choice. Alternatively, you can use play silks instead of Lovevery's fabrics, and I share how to self curate their Storyteller play kit here if you'd prefer to pick and choose.

Amazon Fort Kit Review

Amazon offers a wide selection of fort building kits for kids; this is the one we have. These are often the ugliest and hardest to assemble/disassemble. With that said, they are also the cheapest and biggest typically.

One of the issues with the other two fort kits, is you may find yourself wanting to use more pieces than you have for bigger builds.

Play couches

Play couches are great for fort building! I find for the best forts you need at least 2 play couches, but ideally 3. You can create SO many things with two or three play couches, especially if you opt for ones with arches and more unique shapes!

We often pair our play couches with fort kits for really fun and interesting builds.

You can take the covers off play couches and wash them, making them a nice option for outdoor play during sunny, dry days.

More fort building ideas and options

We've used our outdoor climbing dome with some sheets and cardboard boxes for a fun outdoor fort building day.

Additionally, our pikler triangle makes a great fort/tent on it's own that we've paired with the other items on this list.

Are the Lovevery and KiwiCo fort kits compatible?

Sort of! You can actually use KiwiCo dowels with Lovevery's green connector pieces, however they don't fit in Lovevery's corner pieces. See video.

The Lovevery dowel rods are slightly thinner than KiwiCo's so if you want to use the two together, you'll need to use Lovevery's green connectors in the middle part of your build, and then KiwiCo's connectors in the corners.

Actually KiwiCo's rods fit better in Lovevery's green pieces than the Lovevery rods in my opinion as the additional girth makes them more solid/stuck and less likely to fall out.

Final thoughts on fort building kits for kids

We love the ease of use, stability, and connectivity of KiwiCo's. You can easily pair this with spare sheets or play silks for more imaginative play.

However if you want a done-for-you solution that includes other social-emotional intelligence toys, you can't go wrong with Lovevery's.

Lastly, the cheapest picks come from Amazon. We think these are better for kids 6 and up due to the strength and precision they require in building.