Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I give it 5 stars with a heads-up on how to use it, realizing it's not perfect. So maybe 4 and a half.. This is a wonderful product. I first tried a couple of experiments with my 6 year old son - making the flying saucer fly, and the lights change with your voice. He was fascinated and wowed and loved it and wanted to play with it over his tablet and video games, which is really saying something!! I next used it with an 8 year old who I am tutoring in general science. He also loved it instantly and wanted to play with it non-stop! And I want to play with it too!! It is a great idea, and fun to build experiments and play with. It is a really great interactive, fun, educational and learning device masquerading as a fun toy. What's better than that?? My cautions- while the 8 year old did build circuits on his own, I returned the following week to find batteries reversed and circuits not working. I could not leave my 6 year old son alone with it, for fear he would damage the components. So there is a minimum age child for whom should not play with it alone. And some experiments don't work or don't work well. I tried the dripping faucet strobe and that didn't work, same with a few others. But even then, it went towards being educational as I spun it as that is what happens with science and scientists- experiments don't always work, things don't always go as planned, go on to the next experiment as a true scientist. And that seemed to inspire the 8 year old and appealed to him. As for those who say it doesn't really teach electricity or electronics, that is largely up to the parent or adult who is working with the child. I explained about current flow and electrons needing a closed circuit vs open circuit (and later about different types of energy like electrical and light energy and how they can be interconverted, as in the experiments using LEDs and phototransistors.) The 8 year old asked after a week playing with it why there were different numbers for different resistors, which proved a perfect springboard to explain current and resistance using an LED and the different resistors affecting the brightness of the LED - which I'm sure is an experiment (or a few...) Yes, many experiments are a variation on a theme.. so don't expect 175 unique experiments (or whatever they advertise) but there are enough experiments to go through. Best results will be if you take a few minutes to try experiments out before you do them with your child so as to weed out the weaker ones from the gee-whiz wow ones.. Soo- if you have a curious kid and if you are prepared to do a little explaining and not just hand it over to your child and walk away, this is an amazing kit that I wish I had as a kid!!