A Science Review

Our Thames and Kosmos: Elements of Science kit arrived last week and it did not disappoint.

Our two youngest were thrilled!

You may remember me mentioning (here) that my youngest son is sick of studying mammals. When he saw this huge kit, he said "Now, THIS is science!" -Too cute! : )


Maybe I should start my review by saying that science isn't my favorite subject...

There are two things that disgruntle this home school mom when it comes to science experiments:


#1 When an experiment calls for 'everyday household items' that I don't happen to have. ~That has happened to me so often that it makes me wonder if maybe I don't have an 'everyday household' or something...lol


I was very pleased to see that I actually HAD everything that was not included in the kit for at least the first five experiments. Yay! (that makes for a happy home school mom)

The manual has the items you need to supply italicized, which I appreciated. This kit comes with a TON of items so you are definitely not asked to supply very many. It also has a picture in which all the items are labeled which is super helpful, especially when you are wondering what a 'pipette' is. ; )

#2 When an experiment doesn't turn out right. ~That's not to say that you can't learn from mistakes, but it does tend to be a major let-down for the kiddos. I'd rather not spend time trying to figure out what we did wrong...and did I mention that science isn't my favorite subject? So, I'm happy to say that each of the experiments we tried turned out perfectly! My excited kiddos showed the results to each brother who walked by. I really appreciated the section in the manual after each experiment called "What's going on?" This gave us the scientific reason for our results! The kids enjoyed writing this down in their own words in their notebooks.

I think this is an excellent science kit because my happy kiddos kept redoing the experiments long after I left the table! That just shows how much they enjoyed them and for a mom, that really says it all! : )

My special thanks to All Children's Furniture for the opportunity to review it. Check out their great site! The Arts and Crafts section has several kinds of Thames and Kosmos kits.

~Becky