Have Messy Fun With a Kaleidoscope Enrichment Science Kit

A Great Science Kit

I’m never seen my daughter as excited about a science kit as she was with the Winter Wonderland kit from Kaleidoscope Enrichment. There are a variety of science kits available for sale on the Kaleidoscope Enrichment website, priced from $5 to $40. Given the season, I asked for and received an evaluation copy of the deluxe Winter Wonderland kit, which is sold for $40.

Materials

Although most of the materials provided are reasonably easy to obtain, the idea with this kit is to avoid a disappointing science session and make sure you have everything you need in the box. This way you can get to making messy fun quickly.

You get quite a bit in the box, including safety goggles, a lab coat, and most of the materials you need. All you need to provide some basic kitchen supplies like mixing bowls and measuring spoons. Some of the experiments require the use of the stove or microwave.

The kit comes with eight fun, messy experiments:

• Incredible Instant Snow
• Exploding Ivory Soap
• Sparkling Snow Putty
• Exciting Erupting Snow
• Cool Crystal Snow Ornaments
• Puffy Snowflake Paint
• Hot Ice
• Snowflake Math

Safety

The coolest thing by far, is the fact that the kit comes with a real lightweight lab coat, safety goggles, and rubber gloves.

Most of the chemicals in this kit are no more dangerous than you’ll find in your average kitchen or laundry room. Which is to say, they are safe if you handle them properly. It is recommended that an adult provide supervision while children use this kit.

A safety information sheet is included, with handy information on safe handling and possible harm for all the chemicals in the kit and more.

Instructions

I’m a Geek Dad, of course, but chemistry was never my favorite subject. So I was happy to see that each experiment has clear and easy to follow instructions. My eight-year-old daughter was able to read and follow them herself.

The instructions also include an explanation of what is happening. Even for me it was easy to discuss with my daughter the difference between the reaction in the erupting snow experiment where chemicals are mixed, and the thermal effect in the exploding soap experiment.

Experience

We started with the “erupting snow,” which is pretty quick and easy. I think her favorite was the “Exploding Ivory Soap” experiment. The soap just gets bigger and bigger, until it nearly fills the microwave. Cleanup was not a problem; the soap wipes up easily.

My daughter is not a kid who is incredibly excited by science, but she could barely contain herself as we unpacked the kit. With the hands-on experiments and the lab coat, goggles, and gloves, this is education that just feels like play time.

We got through about half of the experiments in one sitting, and will save the rest for tomorrow. The “hot ice” experiment is probably the most lengthy one. Most of the others can be completed in just a few minutes, including cleanup.

The experience even inspired my daughter to run her own experiment. She wanted to know what would happen if we froze the “instant snow” from one of the experiments. So we separated some of the resulting the material into three sealable bags. One is for the freezer, one is for the refrigerator, and one will be left at room temperature as a control. We’ll see what happens after 24 hours.

Overall, I would say the kit was a lot of fun, and it is very reasonably priced. The shrink-wrapped packaging was nice quality, the instructions clear. Best of all is that we both had fun!

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