We were sent the Explorertot science box for a review.
First impressions
When the box arrived, I was taken aback by the funky case, the kids were so excited and the postwoman looked like she wanted to join us to see what the ‘cool case’ was all about.
Opening the box, we could see there was plenty for us to do, and it wouldn’t matter if it rained this weekend!
What’s it all about?
‘Our exciting themed ExplorerBoxes provide hours of adventure, learning and together Tim e for families! They make unique children’s gifts or rainy day, weekend or holiday activities.’
There are three themed boxes, science box, space box and woodland box. We chose to review the science box, and have had a fun filled weekend! All the boxes encourage STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, maths), this is an important concept when it comes to children’s activities, and most number one toys cover the STEAM spectrum. So it was great to see this!
What’s included?
The fabulous box comes jam packed with activities. Our chosen box was the science themed one, so we knew we would have exciting experiments to look forward to. We’ve been trying more at experiments at home recently, so this was a huge hit for me!
The box we received includes:
For each activity all of the items needed are provided (except scissors and pencil-but I can’t imagine those being too far out of reach when you’ve got kids who constantly need things cutting and like penning their masterpieces everywhere!).
The activity cards are great, they’re very clear, with one side listing items needed plus skills and learning points. The opposite side has a step by step guide on how to carry out the activity, with clear pictures. This is excellent, because if you have a 7 year old like mine, they’ll want to try as much as they can, and the instructions are excellent for them.
Alongside the activity card, each activity comes with another card. Now this one has further reading with regards to the topic just tested/tried out. Not only does it include further reading to expand your little explorers mind, but a list of other experiments you can try with your child/children.
How we got on
We started our Saturday morning with the liquid rainbow. Quite simply you are creating a rainbow in a plastic cup. Easy to follow instructions meant I was simply helping and not leading the activity with 7 year old. The experiment required plastic cups, sugar, paints, paint brush and syringe (all provided), we only needed teaspoon and pen. It was great to see the sugar was fair-trade, it was a huge positive for me...small detail but nevertheless important!
The experiment was straight forward, adding varying amounts of sugar and then different paints separately and eventually creating the rainbow in the last cup (by syringing the colours from each cup).
It was a great experiment and not one I would have thought of anytime soon. Little person was overjoyed with his rainbow! In fact he was ever so thrilled, and told me he didn't think it would work (has high expectations of working with his mum!)...
As I mentioned previously, there is a fact card alongside the experiment card, with further explanation of the topics. For this experiment it was all about density, and there's a brilliant explanation, in simple terms for anyone to understand. The card cleverly explains air, water and less dense verses more dense objects. I love the 'Ready to explore more?' section. We have a fun filled list to work though, from making and using red cabbage juice to test acid/alkali, layering lemon curd, syrup water and oil and testing a few objects to see where they fall and why, separating ink and sink or float experiment. It's fab to see that we've still got a lot more to do, and great ideas, as sometimes (most times) I'm out of ideas!
We moved on to building our skeleton.
Once again, easy enough for little person to do on his own. Great template that needs to be cut out (I won't lie, I like it when I finally get to do something!). Paper fasteners were used to put the dude together, and both 7 and 3 year old giggled for so long whilst making the skeleton perform funny dances and crazy moves! There was colouring and measuring with this activity too.
The fact card provided with this activity is a very clearly and beautifully designed card illustrating all the vital organs, their importance and an explanation of muscles and their work.
There are a 5 further activities that we can do listed in the 'Ready to explore more?' section...I won't bore you with he list, but one we've set our eyes on to do very soon is making play dough model organs!
Mr skeleton was laid to rest so we could move on to making some very pretty magnetic butterflies. This activity got little person designing, whilst I did a little bit of cutting. We put our masterpiece together, and little person had a lot of fun flying the butterflies around the room, with his 3 year old sister running after (it's great honest!). This activity focussed on magnets, and the fact card got us talking about a lot of important sub topics. We've covered magnets in science before, but it was great to be able to test out the knowledge...science isn't going to stick in anyone's head unless they've tried it, and this was a great 'magnet' test.
'Ready to explore more?' section is brilliant once again. We'll be creating a paint trail with a paperclip (I don't want to add too many spoilers (!)), and little person is looking forward to making our own fishing game..all whilst we talk and discover more about magnets!
The last activity that we looked at was planting our cress, 'grow a cress head'. Decorating the paper cup was something little person had been looking forward to, so he got on with it. We can't wait for our cress to grow. In fact, there were so many seeds in the packet that we can grow a fair few cress heads.
Recently (if you follow us on Instagram you'll know) we've been looking at plants in science. So the fact that there is an information card all about plants was a fantastic revision guide for little person. I am also super excited to use the plant spotting guide out and about...
Final thoughts
This box has been full of giggles, science, art, maths and much more. Little person and younger sibling have had a great time with each activity. I've loved the instructions, they were clear enough for little person to get on with it. The fact cards and extra activates was an added bonus. There are some experiments that I hadn't thought of, so it's great that we have the instructions to carry out a fair few more investigations/experiments.
Included is a 'guide for grown ups', and I love it! It's great to see reminders about involving little ones, sometimes, it happens that you're carrying out an activity (a task that is a little difficult for little ones) and forget to engage your child/children (not on purpose), so there's a fab list of ways to include kids at all times.
I like the mention of repeating experiments. The box comes packed with things for each activity that can easily be reused (paints, crayons etc). Ideas about using materials from recycling where needed is wonderful, it's great to see recycling being encouraged. Whilst learning and teaching we've got to ensure we look after our planet, so well done to ExplorerTots for reminding and encouraging us to recycle.
Sometimes, with so many boxes available it gets difficult to choose one. It may sound like they're all the same, but each and every box is unique. Every box has a different perspective, and you really do have to try to see which one you like.
With ExplorerTot box, it set out to cover STEAM, and it did, science- density, magnets etc, technology - magnets in electrical appliances, scanners and so on, engineering - appliances, designs..., art - lots of great colouring, designing... and maths - measuring, counting and so on...was covered in this box. With the further investigations much more of STEAM is covered. As such a wide range of topics are covered, it means I can happily use ExplorerTot box in our home educating journey and know that we've covered so much of what little person needs to know, without the boredom of slouching over a desk!
Furthermore, if you're looking for something that offers a little more guidance, than this may be a good choice. For instance, each activity has learning points, so for the 'make magnetic butterflies', learning points are:
First impressions
When the box arrived, I was taken aback by the funky case, the kids were so excited and the postwoman looked like she wanted to join us to see what the ‘cool case’ was all about.
Opening the box, we could see there was plenty for us to do, and it wouldn’t matter if it rained this weekend!
What’s it all about?
‘Our exciting themed ExplorerBoxes provide hours of adventure, learning and together Tim e for families! They make unique children’s gifts or rainy day, weekend or holiday activities.’
There are three themed boxes, science box, space box and woodland box. We chose to review the science box, and have had a fun filled weekend! All the boxes encourage STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, maths), this is an important concept when it comes to children’s activities, and most number one toys cover the STEAM spectrum. So it was great to see this!
What’s included?
The fabulous box comes jam packed with activities. Our chosen box was the science themed one, so we knew we would have exciting experiments to look forward to. We’ve been trying more at experiments at home recently, so this was a huge hit for me!
The box we received includes:
- Make magnetic butteries
- Build a skeleton
- Liquid rainbow
- Grow a cress head
For each activity all of the items needed are provided (except scissors and pencil-but I can’t imagine those being too far out of reach when you’ve got kids who constantly need things cutting and like penning their masterpieces everywhere!).
The activity cards are great, they’re very clear, with one side listing items needed plus skills and learning points. The opposite side has a step by step guide on how to carry out the activity, with clear pictures. This is excellent, because if you have a 7 year old like mine, they’ll want to try as much as they can, and the instructions are excellent for them.
Alongside the activity card, each activity comes with another card. Now this one has further reading with regards to the topic just tested/tried out. Not only does it include further reading to expand your little explorers mind, but a list of other experiments you can try with your child/children.
How we got on
We started our Saturday morning with the liquid rainbow. Quite simply you are creating a rainbow in a plastic cup. Easy to follow instructions meant I was simply helping and not leading the activity with 7 year old. The experiment required plastic cups, sugar, paints, paint brush and syringe (all provided), we only needed teaspoon and pen. It was great to see the sugar was fair-trade, it was a huge positive for me...small detail but nevertheless important!
The experiment was straight forward, adding varying amounts of sugar and then different paints separately and eventually creating the rainbow in the last cup (by syringing the colours from each cup).
It was a great experiment and not one I would have thought of anytime soon. Little person was overjoyed with his rainbow! In fact he was ever so thrilled, and told me he didn't think it would work (has high expectations of working with his mum!)...
As I mentioned previously, there is a fact card alongside the experiment card, with further explanation of the topics. For this experiment it was all about density, and there's a brilliant explanation, in simple terms for anyone to understand. The card cleverly explains air, water and less dense verses more dense objects. I love the 'Ready to explore more?' section. We have a fun filled list to work though, from making and using red cabbage juice to test acid/alkali, layering lemon curd, syrup water and oil and testing a few objects to see where they fall and why, separating ink and sink or float experiment. It's fab to see that we've still got a lot more to do, and great ideas, as sometimes (most times) I'm out of ideas!
We moved on to building our skeleton.
Once again, easy enough for little person to do on his own. Great template that needs to be cut out (I won't lie, I like it when I finally get to do something!). Paper fasteners were used to put the dude together, and both 7 and 3 year old giggled for so long whilst making the skeleton perform funny dances and crazy moves! There was colouring and measuring with this activity too.
The fact card provided with this activity is a very clearly and beautifully designed card illustrating all the vital organs, their importance and an explanation of muscles and their work.
There are a 5 further activities that we can do listed in the 'Ready to explore more?' section...I won't bore you with he list, but one we've set our eyes on to do very soon is making play dough model organs!
Mr skeleton was laid to rest so we could move on to making some very pretty magnetic butterflies. This activity got little person designing, whilst I did a little bit of cutting. We put our masterpiece together, and little person had a lot of fun flying the butterflies around the room, with his 3 year old sister running after (it's great honest!). This activity focussed on magnets, and the fact card got us talking about a lot of important sub topics. We've covered magnets in science before, but it was great to be able to test out the knowledge...science isn't going to stick in anyone's head unless they've tried it, and this was a great 'magnet' test.
'Ready to explore more?' section is brilliant once again. We'll be creating a paint trail with a paperclip (I don't want to add too many spoilers (!)), and little person is looking forward to making our own fishing game..all whilst we talk and discover more about magnets!
The last activity that we looked at was planting our cress, 'grow a cress head'. Decorating the paper cup was something little person had been looking forward to, so he got on with it. We can't wait for our cress to grow. In fact, there were so many seeds in the packet that we can grow a fair few cress heads.
Recently (if you follow us on Instagram you'll know) we've been looking at plants in science. So the fact that there is an information card all about plants was a fantastic revision guide for little person. I am also super excited to use the plant spotting guide out and about...
Final thoughts
This box has been full of giggles, science, art, maths and much more. Little person and younger sibling have had a great time with each activity. I've loved the instructions, they were clear enough for little person to get on with it. The fact cards and extra activates was an added bonus. There are some experiments that I hadn't thought of, so it's great that we have the instructions to carry out a fair few more investigations/experiments.
Included is a 'guide for grown ups', and I love it! It's great to see reminders about involving little ones, sometimes, it happens that you're carrying out an activity (a task that is a little difficult for little ones) and forget to engage your child/children (not on purpose), so there's a fab list of ways to include kids at all times.
I like the mention of repeating experiments. The box comes packed with things for each activity that can easily be reused (paints, crayons etc). Ideas about using materials from recycling where needed is wonderful, it's great to see recycling being encouraged. Whilst learning and teaching we've got to ensure we look after our planet, so well done to ExplorerTots for reminding and encouraging us to recycle.
Sometimes, with so many boxes available it gets difficult to choose one. It may sound like they're all the same, but each and every box is unique. Every box has a different perspective, and you really do have to try to see which one you like.
With ExplorerTot box, it set out to cover STEAM, and it did, science- density, magnets etc, technology - magnets in electrical appliances, scanners and so on, engineering - appliances, designs..., art - lots of great colouring, designing... and maths - measuring, counting and so on...was covered in this box. With the further investigations much more of STEAM is covered. As such a wide range of topics are covered, it means I can happily use ExplorerTot box in our home educating journey and know that we've covered so much of what little person needs to know, without the boredom of slouching over a desk!
Furthermore, if you're looking for something that offers a little more guidance, than this may be a good choice. For instance, each activity has learning points, so for the 'make magnetic butterflies', learning points are:
- Magnetism is a form of energy
- what energy is
- uses for magnets
- north and south poles, repelling and attracting
In the past, I have mentioned quality of the products that we've reviewed. I can honestly say, that I was pleased with all the products provided (and most are in excess so experiments can be repeated).
Finally, ExplorerTot box entertains, has everything you need for each activity, but also comes with extra information, further investigations, explanations and learning points....so I can happily say we've had a lovely time completing the tasks.
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