Scientific Explorer's Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists
by Scientific Explorer
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List Price: Our Price: $12.95 You Save: $7.04 (35%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Scientific Explorer's Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists
Customer Review: Just use kitchen supplies and plastic cups. Worthless experiments.
Summary: 1 Stars
Manual: Is just a cheap white xerox copy looking print out folded and stapled. With NO pictures. Very few experiments and they are all pretty much the same experiments. All just ways to view the interaction of acids and basics.
Hardware supplies: 3 little plastic dixie cups. 3 plastic test tubes with rounded bottoms and no rack to hold them. They want you to put them in a cup to hold them for viewing. They could have at least made the bottoms flat or included a cheap rack to go with the cheap test tubes. 2 straws, a pippet, and 2 measuring spoons that do not have the measurement amounts printed on them, but instead are referred to as the medium and small spoon. No clay or anything to mold a basic volcano. Instead they include a recipe for using flour to make a really bad paste for the volcano.
Chemicals: pretty much everything you already have in your kitchen except for the Citric Acid, which you could buy somewhere else or use Vinegar which works better in many of the acid/basic experiments.
While I knew when I bought this that the supplies would likely be over priced for this kit. I was expecting that the cost was justified for what I was expecting the manual to be. The manual should have been a nice color experiment book with pictures. And should have been a good collection of experiments that were more than just make colors change and watch the bubbles. Worthless kit. Just google for some simple experiments yourself. You likely have everything in your kitchen already and you will likely find more exciting things to show and teach your kids. I would return this kit if I had a choice.
Customer Review: Fun but expensive
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the sort of kit that you buy exclusively for the instructions (though you could buy a science experiment book instead) and a couple of chemicals that you don't have in your kitchen (in this case red cabbage juice powder, goldenrod paper and crystals). $20-$25 is a bit too much for that, but I bought my kit at Michael's with a 50% off coupon (so I only paid $14 or so after tax) and I think it's not a bad value for that. It will make me go to the store for more supplies that are not included (baking flour and grape juice in my case). But I think the point is that it's getting us started on doing science experiments together - maybe later we'll branch out on our own.
So far we've done two experiments. The first one is your simple mixing baking soda with citric acid and water, which most kids have done a lot, but the second one adds red cabbage juice powder to the mix, and that makes a lot of difference. My 7yo loved seeing the glasses turn different colors, and fizz or not fizz depending which ingredient she added to it. She started not wanting to do any experiments saying science was for boys - but by the end of that experiment she was hooked and ready for more :-) Now I need to find a supplier of red cabbage juice powder to repeat these experiments at her birthday party :-)
Customer Review: GREAT SCIENCE FUN IN THE KITCHEN
Summary: 5 Stars
Used this with two youngsters aged 9 and 6 whilst I was in the US. They loved every minute of it and in particular making an "underwater volcano." Kept them enthralled for hours and we didn't get through all the experiments so we have more to look forward to. Very easy for them to participate, but they need adult help / supervision to show them how to use pipette etc. Everything supplied in the box and most chemicals used are easy to replace with ingredients available from any grocery store. Make sure you identify everything before starting as I didn't initially notice the measures referred to in the text as they were packed under something else! (And once you open the box they want everything to happen immediately of course!)
Great for getting children interested in science although a little bit repetitive with its use of baking soda etc. to make "eruptions". This is a minor quibble, it did what I wanted, which was to engage their interest in science by making it interesting, fun and participative.
Les
Customer Review: Great Toy
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this toy. First of all, its simple enough for young children. My son and I played with this starting when he was about 3 and 1/2 and with some help he conducted the experiments without issue. He did not understand the "science" behind them. but it is a nice way to introduce the idea of being a scientist. We have continued to do the experiments off and on for time and they still hold his attention (he will turn 5 in a month). Additionally, unlike many kits that give only enough material to do the task once, this kit provides a fair amount of the powders and allows you to repeat the project over and over. I will say that many of the items are easy to come by and you could put together a similar kit for very little money, but the packaging and the fact you don't have to put the kit together make it worth it. I would suggest you ONLY buy this on Amazon. I have seen in it stores for as much as $20..which is a rip-off. I liked this kit so much, I even bought some for friend's kids!Customer Review: Great starter kit
Summary: 4 Stars
My son received this for his 5th birthday and we love it. My husband is a physics university professor and he thought it was a great kit with some fun and easy to do experiments. There are several repetitive experiments, but my kids 5 &6 were not bored. As a matter of fact they wanted to do them over and over again and wanted to try to add other things to the mixtures to see what would happen. There are some fun ones like "jiggly crystals" that do require some waiting time, but it was a fun project to do on a weekend. My kids were able to understand all of the instructions and we didn't have to worry about the ingredients being dangerous to touch. Again, this gets a thumbs up from myself and my physics professor husband. We love this kit and would definitely buy it for someone else and recommend for those kids who love science.