Which is why, I figured any of the Discover With Dr. Cool fossil, Geode, or other digging kits would be right up his rock-lov'n alley. We settled on testing out the Dr. Cool Mine for Gems Science Kit.
What I didn't expect was how fascinated he would be with the digging them out... (duh, cool tools, plaster and hidden treasures- like that's not a kid magnet.) And that he would gleefully spends hours uncovering these gems then race to show us all what he found, thereby sucking his older brother into the gem discovery fun (and for a brief moment we had superhero brother harmony in our home... ahhh... bliss!)
The science nerd in me also loves that while my sons were so engaged in digging out each gem, they were also learning about thinks like excavation processes and the history of each gem via the included identification guide. After which, I then moved them over to our wall map to incorporate a little geography by identifying some of the common locations the gems were found in.
Naturally, we also had a conversation about comic book rocks like kryptonite which led to talking about rock or cube-like substances like the AllSpark (Transformers) and The Tesseract (or Cosmic Cube, whichever you prefer from Avengers) and so on, so an extraordinary family time moment was had by all.
Overall, mega thumbs up for the Dr. Cool experience!
You can find more deets here: http://www.discoverwithdrcool.com/
Note: Dr. Cool Mine For Gems is one of our Hot Toys for 2012.
I have been thinking of getting this for my 2 older sons who are 10 and 6. I think they would be able to get along uncovering the gems. That would be a very welcome change. I like that you incorporate more learning opportunities by using a map.
ReplyDelete-A nerd mother of 3 sons :)
Glad you stopped by Shelley! Always great to meet fellow nerd moms :) My sons are 10 and 12 and absolutely, was a very welcome change to have them working cooperatively.
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