Like all the Ein-O Science Toys, this one is a pretty clever set. It’s packed with some very cool science experiments that your kids can do (mostly) on their own. You’ve got the: hoverball, sticky beaker, magic jumping beans, simple water filtering, twin rings, connecting water, paper kite, can roller, frequency match, and suspended paperclip. Granted, you could do most of these with some simple household items, but what’s cool about all the Ein-O toys is that they’re instructions and packaging make them enticing for any youngster. The experiments you’ll do are very educational, but kids don’t always realize how much they’re learning when it’s this much fun.

For abour $12 U.S., I think the Ein-O Top Test Tube Cool Experiments is well worth the price. Most of the Ein-O science toys are hard to find in your local retail stores, but there are several online science toy stores where you can find a great assortment of these fun and educational kits.

Recommended for ages 8 and up but I did it with my advanced almost-seven-year-old and he grasped most of the concepts.

This is a pretty interesting concept for a learning toy. While there are several phonics toys and games out there, I find the few produced by Educational Insights to be the best I’ve come across. Youngsters will love learning with the Phonics Firefly as it uses clever lights, sounds and digital speech with seven different learning games.

In Game 1, a friendly firefly introduces letter recognition with the Alphabet Song. Game 2 teaches the names of letters, then Game 3 quizzes letter recognition. Game 4 teaches the sound alphabet: the sound of “b” is /b/ as in bear. Game 5 quizzes letter sounds. Game 6 introduces simple three-letter words. In Game 7, children make their own words.

Phonics Firefly’s word bank speaks nearly every three-letter word in the English language. Includes built-in speaker with volume control and auto shut-off. Requires four “AA” batteries, not included.

You can find the Phonics Firefly wherever early learning educational toys are sold.

While this isn’t specifically a science toy, it will give kids a fun way to build their math proficiency. And it’s just a pretty clever learning toy in itself. From the manufacturer’s description: “Kids race against the clock toward multiplication mastery with Digitz, the portable electronic game center that makes practice fun! Choose from FIVE games that reinforce important multiplication concepts. Students press the colorful paddles to enter their answers. Motivating lights and sound effects provide instant feedback.”

That’s a pretty decent summary. I can recommend the Digitz Electronic Multiplication toy for parents who want to give their kids an interesting way to practice their math skills. I can see this being a great addition to a homeschooling curriculum or even a traditional class (as long as there were a few to go around or if it’s a small class size.)

It’s available where the latest science and educational toys are sold.

Here’s another one of the really cool science toys I’ve gotten to play with recently. This is one of the “Smart Boxes” in the Ein-O Science line put out by Tedco Toys. All their Smart Boxes are pretty clever and this one is no exception. It comes with the stuff to do five aeronautic projects. The projects are:

1) The high-rise kite: very cool.
2) Foam Jet Plane: this is okay, but nothing much more than a foam jet you might get at the dollar store.
3) Twirler Flyer: pretty nifty.
4) Balloon Lift Off: again, very cool.
5) Flying disk: nothing too special here.

What really makes these Ein-O Science Kits special is the great instruction books they come with. The packaging of the kit itself is pretty catchy and will pique the interest of any kid interested in planes or space ships. For about $12 US, I’ll rate the value of the Ein-O Flight Science very high.

This is a great tool for teaching young kids the alphabet and sounds the letters make. It’s got over 500 three letter words which is plenty for the child just starting to learn to read. I do wish they would have mixed in at least a few four-letter words (not that kind of four-letter word), and maybe even some elementary five-letter words.

It features a standard 1/4 inch headphone jack; raised tactile letter keys that light up during game play; 7 interactive beginning reading games; 20 colorful double-sided word cards; 28-page reproducible book with assessments sight word cards, and simple storybooks students can make and read themselves; and a Teachers Guide.

From the manufacturer’s description of the GeoSafari Phonics Lab: “Seven fun learning games: 1) Alphabet Song - Sing along and learn the ABCs! 2) Lets Learn the Alphabet - Learn as you light up the letters! 3) Lights Out Alphabet Search - Test your Alphabet I.Q. as you switch off the lights! 4) Lets Learn the Sound Alphabet - Discover letter sounds as you light up each letter! 5) Lights Out Sound Search - Check your Sound Alphabet I.Q. 6) Secret Word Maker - Learn to spell 120 three-letter words! 7) Word Explorer - Spell almost any three-letter word (word bank has over 500 words!).”

Overall, this is a pretty nice learning toy. It made at least one top 10 list of the best selling Christmas toys of 2008.

These are some pretty cool science toys for the little kids. The Thames and Kosmos Little Labs series are geared for kids from 5-7 and they do a pretty good job of capturing the interest of this age group. With this particular kit, kids will learn about mechanical physics by building simple machines such as levers, gears, and pulleys. You can also give them a quick lesson about forces and motion and how they apply to our everyday world. It also comes with a 16-page color guidebook which is one of the best things about this series.

The simple pictorial instructions included in all Little Labs have just enough text to reinforce vocabulary and aid in language learning, and also to advise parents and adult supervisors. The instructions are written in both English and Spanish, to help teach Spanish as a second language to native English speakers and also make the kits more accessible to native Spanish-speaking children.

Overall review: like all kits in the Thames and Kosmos Little Labs series, this is an excellent introduction to teaching your youngster the basics of the scientific process. At about $15 US, they’re not cheap, but then again, the educational value they provide is well worth it. You can find this and other best selling toys at Atomic Elephant Toy.

If you’ve read many of the reviews on this site, you’ll know that I love almost all of the Ein-O Science Kits. These test tube kits are just as fun (and educational) as the rest in their line. This one is about egg science and comes with a manual to guide kids through six experiments they can do with eggs. Have you ever seen an egg bounce? Your kid will after doing the experiment called the “Pickled Egg Bounce.” Then they can make a spinning top out of an egg. And do a quick study about egg proteins. And one of my favorite demonstrations was how you can tell a hard-boiled egg from a raw one by spinning it on a flat surface. Very cool.

Overall, the Ein-O Test Tube Egg Science kit is one of the more fun (albeit simple) educational toys in this line. And for about $12 US, it’s really a great buy.

You can find one wherever Ein-O science kits are sold.

Okay, so this isn’t strictly a science toy, but it does involve construction and a certain amount of critical thinking. This particular kit by Jumbnetics had 49 pieces of colorful plastic sticks, balls and magnets. Not to worry about the magnets though, they are completely encased in the balls and are safe for kids as young as 18 months old.

I love construction toys for the valuable skill of critical thinking they provide. My six year old son loves Legos but my one year old daughter is still at the stage where everything she touches ends up in her mouth. That’s why I’ll be letting her play with these Jumbonetics Construction Toys one here in a few months.

This is a pretty cool kit. Kids will learn the science behind 10 clever magic tricks. You’ve got a prism, some optical illusion cards, dominoes, and of course a magic wand. And I love the Ein-O science guides; they are truly first rate. This one is no different and explains the tricks you learn in easy-to-understand language. I’d say this kit would be pretty good for ages 8-10, but a bright 7 year old would benefit as well. You can’t find these kits at just any toy store, but there are several great stores for educational toys online.

My favorite store for science toys is Atomic Elephant Toy and you can get the Ein-O Magical Mystery Box of Science from them for about $18 U.S.

This was a pretty no-frills kit, but with some pretty cool science fair type projects in it. If you’ve ever wondered what kind of chemist makes perfume, well, I guess it would be one who does stuff like you do when you experiment with this kit. The concept is pretty clever, and while it’s actually easy to do the experiments, I found it kind of challenging to make perfume that really smelled good. I don’t think the perfume makers are in any danger from me. But… my future chemist kid could be. My son, yes a boy, and I played with this kit. He wanted to make some perfume that his beautiful mom would love to wear. Well, that didn’t really happen, but we had a lot of fun experimenting with the scents we did make (even the stinky ones). And the learning that he got out of it made it one of the most successful science toys that we’ve played with yet.

In this one, we used sample cards called base perfumes to create our own “special blends.” Okay, that’s what the box called it. We called them our own “stinky blends.” But they weren’t really that bad. The real fun was the measuring and mixing the extracts, then separating and filtering them. He said he felt like a real chemist which I got a kick out of.

Overall, this was a pretty fun kit. It made Atomic Elephant Toy’s list of top 12 best selling toys of 2008 and I can see why. It was just pretty fun overall.