Science Kits

This is yet another pretty clever science kit put out in the Ein-O line of science toys. It’s primarily a DVD that leads kids through several science projects and experiments with the included Lab Notebook and Lab Pack. You watch it in any DVD player (or computer if yours will play DVDs). Each chapter will correspond with a topic and experiment that kids can work through. The projects are mostly stand-alone and can be done in any order but a couple of them do build on previous experiments.

I’ve been very impressed with almost all of the Ein-O science toys and this one is no exception. For around $30 U.S., the Ein-O Science Air Power DVD is a pretty good buy.

This is a pretty cool kit, and one that is probably completely unique to Thames and Kosmos. There are plenty of manufacturers out there of your standard chemistry kits and maybe some general science kits as well, but this company has something for about every field of science.

This one in particular deals with optical illusions and how human perception works. Kids will learn about such things as their blind spot, which eye is dominant, and even how our brain works with our eyes  to perceive color, light, perspective, size, depth, shape and motion. The Thames & Kosmos Mind’s Eye Kit is for ages 10 and up and as usual with their kits, the age recommendation is right on. I looked at the instruction manual for this one and immediately knew that it would be too advanced for my first grade son.

You can pick up one of these wherever the best selling toys are found. My overall recommendation: a great kit (for ages 10 to the early teen years), and a great price if you can find it for under $70.

I’ve been begging to get my hands on one of these for a while. This kit will give you the absolute most bang-for-your-buck value in the sheer amount of experiments is intense.

Ok, that’s not really my picture. I was a lot more like a kid on Christmas in opening this box and left a huge mess inside the office today. Inside was a pretty decent 96 page manual and all the parts to build a camera obscura, a model plane, a simple engine, a DNA helix, and a lot more.

This is quite frankly the ultimate science kit covering 100 experiments in just about every field. While I’d definitely recommend this for the homeschooling crowd, this is definitely the perfect gift for the budding science geek in everyone’s family.

If you do a quick search you can pick up this kit for around $80 and a lot of toy stores will offer free shipping for anything over a certain dollar amount. For this kit that would work out to about 75 cents per experiment. A pretty good deal.