Dr. Cool Science Kits Review : From Fossils to Volcanoes!

Lara is loving year one at school and always comes home enthused about the new topics she has learned - she seems particularly taken with the world of science and is often eager to conduct further research at home, either online or through experiments.  At 5 years old, it is great to see this sort of enthusiasm in her and I'm keen to encourage her interest.  Dr. Cool's Science Kits are a wonderfully interactive way of encouraging an interest in natural sciences and we were very lucky to be asked to review a couple of the Dr. Cools Science activity sets.

Dr. Cools Science Kits range in price from around £10 to £30 with topics ranging from crystals, geodes and gems to dinosaurs, fossils and bugs.  We tried out the Mine for Fossils kit which is designed to inspire your children to find out more about the heady world of paleontology!  Lara couldn't wait to get started.

In her kit, Lara received a digging brick, a piece of muddy rock, in which she had to very carefully dig for 10 real fossils.  Armed with her tools and her little brushes, Lara fastidiously scraped and sweeped.  She enlisted the help of her little sister with the digging!

The digging was a fairly messy exercise with clay flying here, there and everywhere (the instruction booklet did warn us about this!  The girls were beside themselves with excitement.  When I first read the instructions, I was a bit worried that the Mine for Fossils kit would be a short-lived activity but in fact, it took Lara three full afternoons to uncover her 10 real fossils.

The fossils range from sharks teeth to ammonites and even a large piece of dinosaur bone!  Lara was most excited to dig out a tiny fossilised poo!  The kit came complete with an activity guide which features a page of detail about each of the fossils, where they came from and how they were formed.  Lara thought this was the most fascinating thing ever.  I think it has really inspired her to learn more about fossils.  Even Holly has enjoyed going back to the fossils to look at them more closely with the magnifying glass and to keep on brushing them even cleaner!

The Mine for Fossils kit from Dr. Cool also includes an activity book which features 10 puzzles and challenges on the fossil theme - the kits are suitable from around 5/6 years up to 15 years old and I felt the activity book and guide were more suitable to slightly older children than Lara who needed me to help her with the reading and puzzles.  We did like the activity book though, and felt it was a great way of extending the enjoyment of the kit beyond the initial dig.

This week Lara is already getting excited about her next Dr. Cool's science experiment - The Ultimate Volcano Kit.  Daddy and Lara are going to create brightly coloured explosions this weekend and we can't wait. Stay tuned to my facebook page to see how we get on.