Science Kits

This is a very basic chemistry set and I can only recommend it for the youngest of future scientists. It says for ages 4 and up, and I’d say it is pretty good for kids up to maybe 6 or 7 years old. Any older than that and they will likely find it a bit too elementary. That being said, it’s pretty informative and fun for the younger children. They get to study solids and liquids, and in my experience, this is about the right age to introduce kids to these concepts. One of the more fun experiments in this kit is putting the “mystery powder” into water and creating a solid. Okay, so it’s really a gel, but is a gel more of a liquid or a solid? That’s something fun to ask your child as you explore the differences.

This may be one of the only science kits aimed at children as young as 4 years old, and in that respect it is a pretty good one. Aside from the solids, liquids and gels mentioned above, they get to study the concepts of dissolving, evaporation, and start learning the basic research techniques of scientists. For about $20, I can recommend this one if you’re really just getting your kid started in chemistry. If all goes well, in a few years they’ll be ready to move up to one of the more advanced Thames & Kosmos Chemistry Sets.

First, the upside. There are plenty of things to do and plenty of tools to work with, from a candy thermometer, to molds, foil, and spatulas. Provided you buy the actual ingredients, there are plenty of possibilities to what you can do with this kit.

That leads to the downside.

I didn’t have any chocolate to melt down, nor did I have the oils and flavorings to play with at first. This kit only comes with instructions and tools, but not materials. A few quick searches on the web turned up a few results, but nothing as promising as visiting a specialty store in person. Some of the ingredients (such as the chocolate and vanilla oils) can be purchased at grocery stores so you don’t have to do too much hunting if you don’t want to.

After a little hunting around, I had the materials I needed. Deciding to add some extra ingredients (such as cereal for extra texture) I had a tasty little snack within about an hour (counting cleanup).

It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start to candy making and a decent gift for someone with a sweet tooth.

I’ve found it online at Atomic Elephant Toy(along with plenty of other science toys), definitely worth a look.

The Thames and Kosmos Candy Factory at Atomic Elephant Toy.

This is a pretty cool book. There are exactly 1,000 questions so it’ll take a long time of playing with it before you start getting duplicate questions. The cool thing about it is that two people can play. How it works is, when it’s your turn, it shows you a question number. You flip to that question in the book, read it and punch in your answer. It immediately tells you if you got it right or wrong and if wrong, it tells you the correct answer. Then the next player goes, and then back to player one. It keeps track of your score so there is a winner at the end of the game. If you’re playing alone, it still keeps track of your score and you can compete against yourself the next time you play. A two-player game takes maybe 10 minutes to play. Overall, this is a great book, even though it’s really more of a science toy or an electronic learning game than a book. For the price (around $20) it’s highly recommended.

Ever wonder what’s going on inside your computer? Give this computer science kit a try and you won’t be wondering anymore.

This was a pretty cool kit to work with, though a bit on the upper end of the difficulty spectrum. You get to program your own microcontroller, and build circuits to accomplish a variety of different tasks.

This kit comes with the manual, software, hardware to connect to your computer, and various odds and ends for constructing your projects.

The manual is very well done with easy to read explanations, easy to read circuit diagrams, and pictures to show what you would be building.

You can build various gauges to measure light, voltage, moisture, temperature, and a few other sensor based projects. There are other projects, of course, such as a dice game, a timer, amplifier, a recorder/player, an alarm, and a traffic light.

The software for programming the microcontroller is Windows only, requiring an older style communication port to work (though it does come with a USB adaptor), so people with Macintosh or Linux systems will have to either boot to Windows, use a virtual machine, or borrow someone else’s computer to program the device.

I’d enthusiastically recommend Thames and Kosmos Microcontroller for the young geek with a technical flair or the older geek looking for something to tinker with.

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.

Of all the perfume science kits out there, this is perhaps the best value. At about $15 (in early 2008), what kids will learn with this kit far outweighs the cost. There are several experiments in which you get to mix the various chemicals to create your own scents. I did this kit with my six-year-old son (we wanted to make perfume for a mother’s day present), and we had a pretty good time.

Granted, he was a little young to be understanding what all we were doing but he stayed pretty interested through the whole process. Our end result wouldn’t have won any perfume contest prizes (if there is any such thing), but we made a couple of scents that weren’t too unpleasant.

Overall, all of the Wild Science kits produced by ToyOps are great. And the Perfume Laboratory was no different. The kits come in pretty basic packaging but the instructions are well thought out and easy to follow. For the low price, these kits are highly recommended.

This isn’t your basic chemistry set. Granted, you can learn a lot about food science and chemistry from making your own bubble gum, but as far as science toys go, your kids will be having too much fun to realize that they’re learning anything. Like all of the Scientific Explorer kits, the packaging on this one is what first catches your eye. Whoever does their POP and product design has really got it figured out as it would be hard to not want to play with their kits after reading the description on the box.

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This is one of the more solid science kits available. At around $150 US it is fairly expensive but it also comes with an awful lot of chemistry equipment and supplies. Students who learn with this kit will be introduced to some of the most important concepts in chemistry including: acids and bases, carbon dioxide, water chemistry, metal chemistry, food chemistry, chemiluminescence, combustion and fuels, and the chemistry behind soaps, bleaches and household cleaners.

The kit comes with a great experiment manual that guides students through all steps of preparing for and performing the experiments. It gives safety advice and very thorough explanations of what is being observed.

The equipment in this kit is truly first-rate and the sheer number of learning topics make this a great value even with the somewhat high price tag.