Science Toy Review

If you’ve read any of my reviews here about any of the Thames and Kosmos science kits, you’ll know that I think very highly of almost all their kits. While the Little Labs series are of course geared for younger kids - as young as 5 years old - I think they are just as excellent. There are six of these kits all together and while they aren’t huge in scope, they are fairly inexpensive and hit their target pretty well. There aren’t too many stores online that carry these kits but you can find them wherever educational and science best selling toys are sold - usually for about $15 US.

In this kit, your kids will learn about animals in their backyard or parks by investigating their natural habitats and tracks. The Thames & Kosmos Little Labs - Animals kit comes with the standard 16-page color guidebook which is one of the things that make these toys so wonderful. From the official description of this one:

The simple pictorial instructions included in all Little Labs have just enough text to reinforce vocabulary and aid in language learning, and also to advise parents and adult supervisors. The instructions are written in both English and Spanish, to help teach Spanish as a second language to native English speakers and also make the kits more accessible to native Spanish-speaking children. Although numbered, the kits do not have to be used sequentially.

Overall review: these are great kits and well worth the investment for kids ages 5-7 who are just starting to get interested in science.

This is one pretty cool science book for kids. Use this if you’re wanting your kids to learn about our digestive system, the respiratory system, the human skeleton and muscle structure, and our neuro system. The coolest thing about this book is the sound chips, fiber optics, see-through pages and some pop-ups that really make it fun as well as educational. I love all the Dorling Kindersley science books, and this one is one of my favorites so far.

From the book’s description: “Are you ready for a very detailed book of the human body that is practically alive in your hands? Dorling Kindersley has put together this remarkable guide that takes kids through the body’s systems using all kinds of unique features … to teach youngsters everything they’ve ever wondered about the body.”

I tried this book with my six year old and while some of the text was too advanced for him, the graphics and extras really held his attention. And I have to admit, it held my attention for a while too.  Overall review: excellent. And for about $25 US, Dorling Kindersley’s Alive: The Living Breathing Human Body is also a great buy. While your at it, check out Atomic Elephant Toy’s list of their best selling toys of 2008.

This is one of the more fun science toys I’ve reviewed in a while. It’s reminiscent of the old Ronco Mr. Microphone from the 1970s, but it’s basically a kit that kids put together themselves before getting to strut about saying, “Hey good looking, We’ll be back to pick you up later.” After putting it together, kids can personalize the mixer with the reusable stickers. It does come with the headset and wireless transmitter as well.

There’s not a lot of actual science involved in putting this one together, but the book it comes with is excellent and will give youngsters a solid background of the fundamentals of music and sound. For about $25 US, the SmartLab Rock Star Microphone is a pretty fun toy and should keep any 8-10 year old busy for a few hours.

This is a great kit for kids that might just be getting interested in science. I haven’t tried all the experiments, but there are 25 total in pretty much all the primary fields of science: chemistry, physics, biology, air and water. Not only does this kit make learning for your kids fun, it really introduces them to the scientific method and the whole process of experimentation.

I tried out this one with my soon-to-be six year old and it was just about the right level of complexity. The experimentation manual was great, but some of the vocabulary is a little over the average 1st grader’s head. Nevertheless, if you’re like me, you’ll be doing the experiments along side your kid so this won’t be an issue. What I really like about the Thames and Kosmos Stepping Into Science Kit is that it goes hand in hand with their other six in the Little Lab series. We plan on trying a couple of the other ones soon.

My overall recommendation: a very solid kit. For around $36 US, it’s also a great value. You can find one wherever the best science toys are sold.

Another one of the great physics science kits by Thames and Kosmos, this one deals with solar power and the physics behind how we get energy from the sun. It’s for ages 8 and up and I’ll have to say that that’s about right in this case. I tried out this kit with my six-year-old “helping” and most of the topics were a little too advanced for him. He had a good time watching me put together some of the experiments, but he loses interest fairly quickly if he isn’t the one actually doing the building. We did talk about some of the basics of solar power and he was able to grasp some of the concepts but it wasn’t nearly as beneficial than if he was able to do it all himself.

That being said, this is still a great kit. Give it to an 8, 10 or 12 year old and they will learn far more than they realize when going through the experiments. Basically, the Thames and Kosmos Physics Solar Workshop will teach you the topic of solar energy, focusing primarily on photovoltaic cells. You can build 12 models, and do a couple of different experiments with each.  You’ll learn how solar cells can turn light into electrical energy, and how this energy can drive motors and mechanical devices, which in turn can use gears to convert this into power for vehicles.

One of the best things about the Thames and Kosmos science kits is the great manuals they come with and the fact that all the parts in this kit are interchangeable with their other physics kits. Overall, this is a great learning toy and one that I can highly recommend. Even for the price, about $60 US, it’s well worth it. You can check out all the other science kits offered by Thames and Kosmos here.

I love these SmartLab Challenge quiz books. They have one each for 1st through 4th grades and then the Human Body Challenge, and my new favorite, the SmartLab Weird and Gross Challenge. I haven’t tried the Human Body one yet, but I did get the 1st Grade Challenge for my six-year-old and now we’re playing with this one.

I think the grade ones are pretty age appropriate, and this one is suitable for kids up to about 12 or maybe 13. Actually with this one, some of the questions are more trivia like, and it doesn’t matter how old you are- you may just have to guess. But the questions are indeed entertaining. I ended up playing this one with my wife while sitting on the deck the other night and we had a good time learning some weird and gross facts that we would have never learned otherwise.

If you haven’t tried any of SmartLab’s educational toys, this is a good one to start with. At about $19 US, it’s a good value for the price.

This lab kit comes with a computer CD-Rom and all the apparatus needed to perform 10 terrific hands-on experiments. Sure, the Professor Ein-O character is a clever play on the words “I know” science, but this line really is one of the more clever lines of educational toys.  This kit provides a practical introduction to the science of optical illusions with the fun assistance from the Ein-O I Know Guide. It says it’s fully compatible with Windows and Macintosh systems but I’ve only tried them on my Windows computer.

You can pick up one of these Ein-O Practical Science Optical Illusions kits from my favorite retailer of science toys, Atomic Elephant Toy for just over $30 U.S.

I’ve reviewed one of Tedco Toys’ Discovery Tanks recently - the space science one. This one is equally as cool, but with a focus on nature science. Like the other, this one is a pretty solid kit. Have you ever heard of a pooter tube? Unless you’re an insect collector, you probably haven’t. It’s basically a small jar with two flexible tubes you can use to vacuum insects into the jar. It’s pretty clever, and pretty cool.

I was also pleasantly surprised with the rest of the stuff this toy comes with. It has a small pair of binoculars (not very sophisticated, but kind of cute). It also has some tweezers, a magnifying glass and of course, some collection jars for the future entomologist.  What makes this Tedco line some of the best science toys out there is the excellent instruction guide. Sure, the Professor Ein-O science line is a clever play on the words “I know” science, but the guides really are what make these toys so valuable.

This one made the top 12 best selling toys of 2008 at Atomic Elephant Toy, a great online source of science kits and educational toys.

Wow, I did this little science project recently and was pretty amazed to discover what our owl had recently eaten. If you’ve never dissected an owl pellet, you should give it a try. It’s kind of gross, but they say the pellet has been sanitized so I’m sure it’s not dangerous to be handling- albeit it’s still gross. My five-year-old and I had a pretty good time separating the bones from the other matter in the pellet (who knows what that was) and laying them out according to the skeletal diagrams that came with it.

The most interesting thing about this kit is learning exactly what the little skeleton is. We weren’t sure what the owl had eaten until we had enough bone evidence to lay out and determine that our guy had eaten a shrew. It looks kind of like a mouse but with a slightly different looking skull and different teeth.

If you’ve never done this experiment, you may not know exactly what an owl pellet it. Well, basically when an owl eats its prey, it swallows it whole, lets the digestive system do its work, and then regurgitates a pellet of all the undigestible material from its meal. Inside this pellet you’ll find the bones of whatever it had just eaten. Sometimes it will be a small bird, or a rat or mouse and in our case it was a shrew. For about $6-7, this is a pretty cool project. It even made Atomic Elephant Toy’s list of the best selling toys of 2008.

Okay, so the toy I’m reviewing this morning can’t officially be called an “ant farm” as that is a trademarked name for the Uncle Milton line of ant habitats, this is pretty much the same thing. There are many live animal kits (or toys) out there but the classic ant habitat is still one of the most fun.

This one (which made my list of top 12 best selling toys of 2008) is by Wild Science, a manufacturer that makes several other great science toys including their Eco-Dome, Ant-Lantis, a worm farm and a couple of other ant habitats. This one is similar to the others as kids basically learn the same things about ants… how they build their colony, work together, carry their food to one another and generally build a cohesive ant system.

Overall, the Wild Science Ant Jungle is a fun, colorful ant habitat that should keep any kid entertained and learning for months. Do note that this kit does not come with a free mail-in certificate for ants so you will either have to catch your own or buy them from an ant harvester. Our favorite supplier is Ants Alive. Still, at about $15 US, this is a great kit and well worth it.