SPECIALTY TOYS & GIFTS
curiousER and curiouser Science Toys That Encourage Experimentation and Exploration by JACQUELINE CUCCO, associate editor WITH THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR OFF TO A SOLID START, IT’S TIME FOR KIDS TO GET those brains churning again. More toys than ever before are incorporating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) concepts into playtime. The focus this year is on interactive toys that push kids to experiment and explore. These educational toys make sure there is no more sitting back and blankly staring at screens or playing with the same old one-dimensional items. This new breed of science toys encourages kids to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. For instance, kids can use household items to create chemical reactions with the Crayola Color Chemistry Lab Set, and conduct their own cabbage juice pH tests with Thames & Kosmos’ Ooze Labs Chemistry Station. Kids can even build their own robotic hand with littleBits’ Base Inventor Kit, and sew up soft plastic suture training skin to learn about animals with Alex Toys’ Scientific Explorer Veterinary Science. Toys provide a more hands-on approach for kids to discover chemistry, physics, and what makes the solar system tick. Get into the nitty gritty of our favorite new science toys below.
Kids can build their own technology with LITTLEBITS’ Base Inventor Kit. There are 12 in-app activities that teach kids how to create different inventions, including a voice-activated robo-hand and an intruder alarm.
Beaker Creatures Liquid Reactor Super Lab,, from LEARNING RESOURCES, is a working lab set that includes fizzing reactor pods with a surprise Beaker Creature hidden inside. Kids can follow the steps to dissolve the pod to reveal and classify which of the 35 collectible characters they received. The Beaker Creatures set also doubles as a working lab set, with instructions for additional science experiments.
THAMES & KOSMOS’ Ooze Labs Chemistry Station is a lab set with which kids can experiment and create slimy, fizzy, bubbly creations using the included tools, such as a syringe, a petri dish, a funnel, and more. The kit features printed cards that clip onto the lab station with approximately 20 experiments, including glowing slime, color-changing slime, fizzing reactions, oozing bubbles, rainbows in a test tube, chromatography, cabbage juice pH tests, solutions, filtering, crystals, a fire extinguisher, and an underwater volcano.
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THE TOY BOOK | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 | toybook.com
