Thanks, Young Scientists Club, for sending us a kit so Sophia and I could write this review!

It seems that all of the fun “science experiment stuff” we get is for my oldest daughter.  Although Sophia (who’s six) can sometimes help with Ariel’s experiments, she often feels left out because none of them are for her.  So she was glad to learn that the Young Scientists Club has kits made especially for her age range – like this Exploring the Wonders of Nature kit featuring the Magic School Bus gang.  (The recommended age level for this is 5 and up.)

As you can see, there’s lots of cool stuff in here: a bug net, some plaster and the tools to mix it, powdered red paint (!), animal tracks matching cards, and even this nifty plastic paw for making your own tracks!  After flipping through it, I pulled the instruction book out and set it on top for Sophia to take a look at.  Her one complaint was that it doesn’t have pictures of each experiment so “how am I supposed to figure out which one I want to do?”  I walked her through the layout of the booklet, showing her the components of each experiment.

Each one has a “question,” a blank for the child’s hypothesis, a list of materials needed, and instructions for completing the experiment.  There are handy notes and icons, like a little house indicating that a necessary “material” is something you’ll find around the house (it isn’t in the kit), and nice big red text that tells the child if a particular step is something an adult needs to do.  Finally, each one finishes up with a space to note the results and then the student’s conclusion.  The whole booklet is, of course, illustrated with Magic School Bus characters.

There are a variety of experiments here.  We opted against a couple of the messier ones (like a papiér mâche ant) for this particular busy week.  Sophia chose to gather some of the leaves from our yard and do rubbings.

Unfortunately, she also chose to do her rubbings with a green-yellow crayon, so they didn’t show up well enough against the paper for me to get a picture!

Oddly enough, I think the matching game was her favorite part of the kit (at least so far).  There are cards with animals and cards with tracks.  You play like the game of “Memory,” but you match the animal to its track.  (They’re labeled.  You don’t just have to recognize them all!)

The Young Scientists Club has Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest pages where you can join them to find cool experiments.  Obviously, you can buy their kits, like the one shown above.  They also have an option to subscribe for kits to be mailed to you each month.  (That could add an element of fun to your homeschool!)

What’s your student’s favorite science topic?