The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Secrets of Space By Horizon Group USA, Homeschool STEM Kits For Kids, Includes Hands-On Educational Manual, Star Chart, Constellation Cards, Solar Beads & More, Multicolor (WH-925-1127)

Fun kit to perform experiments on germs. Instructions are clear. You do need some supplies not included in the kitchen, but they are well marked. Overall, easy to use and fun to do.

I bought this kit for my daughter's 10th birthday. She's above average in intelligence, and she thoroughly enjoyed this kit. I think the age range on this product is appropriate. It's simple enough for younger kids to do with help, and has enough of a "wow" factor for older kids to enjoy. The kit comes with a guide, which walks kids through several learning activities and experiments. The first activities are simple (reading volcano and earth science facts, and matching description stickers to the headers in the booklet) but effective. We did these on the first day, learning our background material and finishing up by painting our volcano. The volcano is a thin, black plastic cone with rivulets molded into it, that you can paint to look like a volcano. There is a cheap water-based paint palette included for this. My daughter half-heartedly spent 15 minutes on this, and told me it was too tedious. Children who are more artistically-inclined would probably enjoy this part more than she did. The next day, once the paint was dry, we were ready to make our volcano erupt. You'll need to supply water, baking soda, vinegar, baking powder, and lemon juice to do all the variations. From this point on, the experiments are all about acids and bases. I appreciated the fact that the child is invited to use trial and error to determine which proportions of baking soda, vinegar, and water produce the best results. My daughter enjoyed wearing the safety goggles and using the test tubes, pipette, and measuring cups to make chemical reactions (just like a real scientist), and recording her results in the lab booklet. We got some good reactions--nothing too crazy, we didn't need a mop but we did need to put down some paper towels quickly. If your kiddoes are just looking for dramatic, foamy explosions, this kit is probably way too low-key. We learned a little about volcanoes, a little about pH, and spent a couple of cool "unplugged" hours together. All in all, definitely worth the money. I plan to buy other kits in this series.

I am a former teacher and current homeschool educator. I am very picky about science kits and generally most fall short of my expectations. This kit, however, is a wonderful jumping off point for an inquiry into dinosaurs. This kit used hands on activities to teach about the different types of fossils, carnivore and herbivore teeth, the different time periods, habitat, etc. The final project culminated in a 3D dinosaur puzzle to build and paint. The ideas were creative and I appreciate someone else doing the planning, material gathering, prep work for me!Some extension activities we did: made a full sized timeline and the children drew with sharpie and watercolorsd dinos to add to the timeline (simple tutorials can be found on the Art for Kids Hub website), we dissected owl pellets to recreate a paleontologist's thought processes, we printed a life sized Triceratops footprint and discussed perimeter, surface area and measuring, I drove my car at 15 mph and my son chased it to experience in a concrete way the speed of a T-rex, we measured dinosaur sizes on the wall and floor and marked them with tape, we made dino eggs out of paper mache, designed dino habitats/diorama for our Schleich dinos with materials from the dollar store, talked about ecosystems and food chains, learned about Mary Anning and sang "She Sells Seashells," etc etc.Have fun with your dino kit and enjoy learning with your child!

The description mentions light bulbs, buzzers, and circuit boards--ignore that, as none of these items have anything to do with this kit.My 6 year old, who had no previous interest in volcanoes, has really enjoyed this kit over the past week. We are also reading the Magic School Bus chapter book "Voyage to the Volcano" and the two items go very well together. We home-school, so I'm supplementing this kit with extra activities from my own ideas and other non-fiction books and websites in order to create a fun "extra credit" science unit.She's excited, we're both learning, and I was OK with the price of this item. So far it's got 5 stars. It loses half a star because of false advertising. It really bothers me when products like this have embellished marketing pictures/descriptions. The differences between the picture and the actual contents are subtle, but it still bothers me. The paintbrush is not longer than the paint box, the pipette is shaped differently than pictured, the volcano form is shipped in a flattened state and is thus not the same shape as pictured, and the second test tube (pictured inside the volcano form) is the same size as the test tube pictured in the rack--much smaller than the "crater" of the volcano form.It loses another half star for the little details that aren't quite right. The pipette doesn't work at all. The red food dye provided is powdered but instructions refer to "drops of food coloring". The provided paints are ineffective for painting the volcano form. The goggles are unnecessary. The instructions provided do not produce a very impressive "eruption".The product is very durable and we really like the poster and activity guide. When we're done with the kit I'll pack it back up and keep it for when the other kids are ready for it (the consumables are easy and cheap to replace). For a 6 year old, it's good exposure to many volcano-related topics, but fully understanding most of the details is beyond her interest at this time (when she's a bit older, the details may be more interesting, but the activities would likely be too boring). We are both excited to try more Magic School Bus kits/books. I estimate that this time through we'll get about 5 hours of use from this kit, 75% of it with one-on-one adult supervision.I am inspired to try the acids and bases kit, since the volcano eruption activities (which account for 4 of the 12 activities) are more chemistry than volcanology.

Purchsed this for Christmas for my granddaughter she loved it Book arrived early and in perfect condition