My kids (all 3 of them) had a great time with this kit. They love the magic school bus books and show. This kit made the book come alive for them. They had so much fun. The huge poster and sticks were really interesting and the experiments kept their attention for hours (not the easiest thing to do with three boys especially at their ages, 6-11 years old!!!!). I would defiantly recommend this product for your own children or as gifts (that is what I am doing this year. I have a pair of nieces that will love this kit!!!).
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I purchased this to use with my homeschooled 6-year-old. She absolutely loved it and it really helped solidify what we were learning about in books. She liked charting her process on the huge poster cart and excitedly shared the results of the experiments with everyone. It has easy to follow directions and everything actually works! You could probably round up the materials in this kit for less money but the convenience of having everything in one place and the kid-friendly directions make this a keeper!!
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I bought this for my homeschooled 5 year-old. He really enjoyed working through the experiments, and he particularly loves the life-size poster that still hangs on his wall. My concern is that the experiments didn't always work well, and sometimes didn't really illustrate the principle that was being taught. For example, the model diaphragm required a sheet of rubber to be taped over a cut soda bottle... that was extremely finicky to get airtight, and I barely got it to work. My son certainly couldn't do it himself. Also, the poster comes with stickers of body parts which are supposed to correspond to the experiments, but they don't. I hate to quibble, since the poster was his favorite part of the kit; it's just the kind of inconsistency that caused me to see this as more of a toy than an educational resource.
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I bought this for my son's friend who turned six this summer. He has always shown a strong interest in the human body and after much research this seemed like a super age-appropriate gift to encourage his love of the body. He has loved it. His parents called me to tell me thank you and asked where I got it so they could get him more of the kits from the Magic School Bus series. I bought the one of space for my son and he (and I) have equally loved it and learned a lot. I bought this gift almost 6 months ago and when I was at their house about 3 weeks ago, I noticed he had his poster of the human body (which was a lot larger than I expected it to be) hung up on his wall across from his bed. I would highly recommend this (and any Magic School Bus kit) for any budding young scientists.
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I know from experience that boxed science kits often look more interesting in the package than in reality. I was hoping this wasn't the case with the Frizz since we love her so much. But unfortunately this was the case here too.
Good.
The huge (life size for my 6 yo dd!) body poster is pretty cool. It looks like something that will last for a while (though it did rip when we unfolded it). The body part stickers are pretty neat too. We haven't stuck them on the poster yet though. I'm just afraid that we won't be able to get them lined up exactly with the body part outlines and then my dd will be frustrated. If they were repositionable stickers I would be much less anxious.
The instruction booklet is colorful and features the familiar characters which is nice. In theory, the topics should be interesting.
Bad.
Materials from home might not be readily available. Right off the bat you need chicken bones for experiment one. Not such a great idea for a kid who is excited to get the stuff out of the box and play. You mostly likely have to skip experiment one until you can plan for it. You'll need your own 2 liter bottle too. We don't normally have soda in the house but bought some for the "tornado" tube experiments. So unfortunately we had to cannibalize that experiment for this experiment, which sadly didn't work.
Materials needed from home might not work well. We had to use a cut-up 2 liter bottle for the lungs "experiment". Today's 2 liter bottles probably don't work as well as ones from a few years ago that were thicker and perhaps not made of post-recycled materials. The Pepsi bottle was much too flimsy to hold its shape when a rubber band was wrapped around it. Every time we tried to do the activity it fell apart. Household tape is probably not strong enough for the needs in the kit.
Materials in the kit don't work well. The rubber bands provided in the kit were too small to work on the experiments as described. We had to find our own rubber bands that were bigger. While I appreciated the quality of the construction paper provided, it was much too stiff to use for the joint "experiment". We needed to use our own. The plastic gloves provided are ginormous and even too big for my adult hands, let alone a child's hand. You are supposed to tape construction paper to latex rubber and pull on the rubber. lol. Household tape does not stick well to rubber on its own, let alone while pulling on it. The latex rubber provided was not large enough to fit around the Pepsi bottle without leaks. It should have been larger and a circle shape instead of square. The tubing for the ligament "experiment" was shorter than pictured in the instructions so we had to put it together in a different way and didn't work as well as pictured.
Instructions are not well thought out. You're supposed to attach a balloon to the pop bottle and then turn the balloon inside out. That proved to be a nearly impossible feat. We figured a work around on our own. The instructions sometimes seem to be written in the wrong order at times. They aren't as detailed or as well thought out as you might expect for educational materials. It feels like the people writing the instructions didn't actually test out the activities. A good teacher would have much more clear and detailed instructions.
Instructions are not very detailed. You get reminders to "put this system's stickers" on the poster. However, the experiments don't do a good job of explaining to which system they belong. It would be better if the "experiments" were clearly introduced and presented within organ systems. You have to fill in a lot of blanks yourself as a parent/teacher. Some of the instructions seem like after thoughts just thrown in.
Instructions are formatted as "hypotheses" which is really a misuse of the scientific method in my opinion. These are activities designed to illustrate how things works, not actual experiments which you can observe outcomes. (Well except maybe experiment 1 which you have to skip until you have chicken bones.) All the blank space provided to fill out hypotheses and results would have been much better served with more actual information and facts about the organ system which is presented in a very sketchy way.
The science kit just doesn't live up to the reputation of interesting, clearly organized, factual information provided in the Magic School Bus story books.
