A lot of you may have heard of Sue, the T-Rex and wondered who the heck she is. Well, she is the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever found.  Sue was found in 1990 by the paleontologist Sue Hendrickson. The great dino was named after her (although it isn’t known if the specimen was male or female.) Another interesting tidbit about Sue the T-Rex is that the fossil skeleton was sold for the highest amount ever paid for a dinosaur. You can see this great dinosaur now at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Or, you can pick up this cool Paint & Play dinosaur kit at your favorite science toy store. One of the coolest things about this, and all dinosaurs, is that we really don’t know what colors dinosaurs were. Scientists and paleontologists make their best guesses based on where they lived, what their natural environment was like, what they ate, etc. But the truth is, we’re not completely sure if the T-Rex was brown, green, gray or bluish purple. I’m betting it wasn’t bluish purple, but who knows?

Dinosaurs make great educational toys and the Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of the coolest of them all. This kit comes with paint and a brush so kids can use their imagination to make her any color they want. So for about $12-14 US, this Sue the T-Rex Paint and Play kit is a pretty nice toy.

SmartLab Toys has done a great job of producing chemistry, physics and general electronics science toys, but with the introduction of their You-build-it Rock Star Microphone they’ve branched into an almost new area. With this kit, kids get to build their own microphone. Okay, so they’re not soldering capacitors and resistors to integrated circuit boards, but they do get to somewhat put the microphone together.

And while doing this, they’ll be reading along in the excellent book included and learning about acoustics, multi-track recording and even some tips for performing on stage (even if the stage is their living room and the audience is their parents.) Some of us middle-aged parents will remember the Mr. Microphone and the cheesy commercial- “Hey good looking. Be back to pick you up later.” The principle of the SmartLab Rock Star Microphone is similar to that. Kids build the headset microphone, clip the transmitter to their belt and broadcast their voice to a nearby radio.

Overall review- while the sound quality isn’t great, it’s decent and the true benefit from this kit is what kids learn while building it and reading the great manual. For about $25 US, I can highly recommend this kit.

This is a pretty cool learning toy. While it’s not particularly a science toy, it is still pretty educational. And still pretty fun. It’s basically a geography quiz, but with a hands-on tactile aspect to it (the globe). Kids can pick a category like the US and Canada, other continents or the entire world. And with over 10,000 questions, kids won’t get bored too quickly. One thing I wondered about with this one (as with any toy using a recorded voice) was the quality of the sound. And actually, the voice in this one was surprisingly pretty good.

Plus, it’s got some pretty cool sound effects and lights that make learning with it fun (even though kids won’t realize how much they’re learning.) Another bonus is the music. It plays music from around the world. While not many kids will recognize the national anthem of Spain, they will definitely be able to tell the differences in the music from various countries. This little addition just made it an overall more enjoyable toy to play with.

Okay, so I can’t call this one of my favorite science toys, it is definitely one of my favorite educational toys. It’s for ages 8 and up and you can usually pick up the Geosafari Talking Globe for about $80 US.

For an entry level microscope, this is a pretty good choice. I tried this one out with my five-year-old son and it was just about the right size for his small hands. It comes with a couple of slides and a what they call a “curiosity box” for observing things other than standard slides. It does work pretty well with standard slides though. We had the most fun when we found common items around our house and looked at them up close. It also has some tweezers and a scalpel for helping you to make your own slides. This part does need some adult supervision, but for looking at standard items (hairs, bugs, pennies), my kid was able to do most of it on his own.

For about $40, this the Learning Resources Primary Microscope is a pretty good set-up for getting children interested in biology. There are lots of other children’s microscopes out there, some less expensive and some much more expensive, but this is a good choice if you want to start somewhere in the middle. You can get this one wherever the best science toys are sold, or you can follow the link above.

This is a pretty fun kit for any kid who likes to root around in the backyard looking at plants and bugs. There are quite a few educational activities packed into this toy and this is truly one of the most fun science kits I’ve reviewed so far. Kids can make their own greenhouse and plant some of the seeds it comes with, or what’s even more fun, plant some common household beans from your pantry. These grow fast and most kids appreciate the near-instant gratification. This kit comes with some mini-gardening hand tools, four pots for your plants and even a small little ant farm.

Probably what I like best about this is the great information that comes on the project cards. Of course, I’m an adult (mostly) and I like the advice this toy gives me in how to teach my kids about nature. For around $30, I can highly recommend the Ein-O Science Nature Explorer Kit.

This is a pretty fun educational toy for exploring space and learning a bit about our solar system. It’s made by Interactive For All which, as far as I can tell, is primarily a children’s educational software company. This kit does come with a CD-ROM which is fairly informative (but nothing too advanced). What makes me give this the “cool science toy” designation is really the glow-in-the-dark space mobile. It’s got a few planets, a space shuttle and a cute little astronaut. They’re not to scale of course, as the astronaut is bigger than Saturn, but not many kids will care when they’re putting this together and hanging it from their ceiling. It does look pretty darn cool when the lights go out.

There’s also a space shuttle model to put together. It doesn’t glow but it’s pretty cool in its own right. Another semi-cool aspect of this toy is the 3-D movie on the CD-ROM and 3-D glasses. The movie is pretty short and not terribly spectacular, but like I said, it’s semi-cool. And maybe a 7-year-old kid would think it’s a bit more fun than I did. Probably so. Overall, a nice kit for just over thirty bucks.

This is one seriously advanced experimental science kit. If you’re thinking about introducing your child to a study of some of our more renewable energy sources, you can’t go wrong with this kit. With this cool science toy, you get to put a basic model car together- then add a solar cell and hydrogen fuel cell to provide the power. It uses the solar cell to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The fuel cell then uses these gases to produce electricity to actually drive the car.

The experiments in the Thames and Kosmos Fuel Cell Car range from fairly basic to very advanced, but the manual that comes with it is truly first rate. Thames and Kosmos makes some great physics and chemistry sets and this is one of their best. I wholeheartedly recommend this for the environmentally conscious parent who wants their child to learn about some of the science that we may come to rely on in their generation.

This is one cool science kit from TedcoToys’ line of Professor Ein-O science toys. The Discovery Tank opens up the spectacular expanse of space and provides a great introduction to Space Science. Professor Ein-O is a take on everyone’s beloved Albert Einstein, and the play on words of “I know” science. While the name of this series is very clever, the products are equally as brilliant. This particular learning toy comes with a mini model of the solar system, an astronaut figure, a star chart and a great book with some nice explanations about space science.

I love this kit and can easily recommend it to your future astronaut. The Space Discovery Tank is available at only a few educational toy stores but if you search for it (like in the link in this sentence) you can find one easily enough.

I got this chemistry set to try out some of the experiments with my five-year old. It says you can do all these cool experiments with ingredients from your kitchen cabinet. Okay, I guess the guys at SmartLab Toys have never seen my kitchen pantry. I didn’t have any standard vinegar, or baking soda. And I certainly didn’t have any purple cabbage. But after a quick trip to the grocery store, we had everything we needed to do some pretty neat experiments with this chemistry set.

The purple cabbage was to boil and make a type of acid and base litmus paper. If you’re not used to cooking with purple cabbage (and I certainly am not), you’ll learn that when you boil it, it will turn the water a stinky dark purple. The drill was to shred some cabbage, boil it, strain it, and then soak some paper strips in this purple dye to make the litmus paper. We cut up strips of coffee filters and that worked pretty well. After letting these now-purple strips of paper dry, you can test the acidity of various solutions like lemon juice, milk, water or hydrochloric acid. Of course, like purple cabbage, not many people have a beaker of HCl in their pantry either. Overall, this was a pretty neat experiment- but there were many more.

The kit comes with a small beaker and three little test tubes. We also made some glow-in-the-dark slime which should be a big hit with any five-year old kid. The recommended experiments in the book were great, but we had just as much fun by mixing all kinds of other “chemicals” we could find in the kitchen. Baking soda and vinegar is always fun. Lemon juice, garlic powder and soy sauce makes a very stinky concoction. And you know what? It’s mostly acidic as well. We know that because we tested it with our litmus paper. If you’re considering any cool science toys for a fun afternoon of experiments, you can’t go wrong with this science kit.

I came across this new and improved ant habitat recently and want to tell you how cool this one is. Note, it’s not called an Ant Farm, as Uncle Milton has a trademark on that term, but in the most basic sense it is like an Ant Farm. But it’s so much more. This one has a moat! Imagine your standard ant habitat, but with tubes leading to different areas where the ants can freely crawl about the plants and such. But don’t worry, they won’t be able to escape because of the unique “lake” surrounding the center area. This is really a clever take on a traditional ant habitat.

While any ant habitat is a great learning experience and can be a lot of fun, this one adds an extra level of coolness to the experience. What kid doesn’t love a moat? Check this one out at your favorite retailer of science toys and kits. You won’t be disappointed! And for added fun, you can connect the Ant-lantis kit to your other ant and worm habitats, and even their monster Eco-dome habitat. All together, these make for a pretty exciting adventure.