The Magic School Bus: Slime and Polymer Lab

My kids are crazy about things that fly. We have more airplanes, gliders, kites and helicopters that should be legal. Sometimes I wonder if we should call our house a museum and open doors to public. When we are not playing with planes, baking airplane shaped cookies, reading books about airplanes and designing our own models we like to do science kits. Today I’m going to tell you about our experience with Magic School Bus Soaring into Flight Kit. Airplanes fly. We all know it. How? Is it because they have “jet engine”? Hmm, maybe not, I heard shape has to do something with it. I couldn’t be sure. As a parent of children, who have one thousand questions about airplanes, I found myself completely unprepared to answer most of them. Maybe I slept through the aerodynamics course back in high school (wait, did we have aerodynamics class in high school?). Every time my kids stumble upon a topic I don’t know much anything about (slugs, puke, ghosts, they have diverse interests), I learn about it along with them. And I always appreciate a good resource to help us on our learning adventure. Soaring into Flight is a great learning tool. It might not answer ALL the questions, but it will sure explain a lot. Some experiments are simple. They are simple because they use everyday things to demonstrate scientific concepts. I think this simplicity is a genius. It elevates the mundane to the level of scientific investigation. What will happen if you drink the juice out of a juice box and keep sucking in on the straw? What’s the hypothesis? Results? Conclusions? One minute we were just drinking juice, and now we are talking about air pressure, a topic pertinent to the science behind flight. In another experiment we made four different paper airplanes and tested, which one is the best. I was utterly surprised to find that a large paper clip attached to the tip of a paper airplane makes it flight farther. Why did it happen? So many hot topics to talk about here: weight, faster moving air, lift, how design affects performance. We made lots of paper airplanes in the past, but never once I thought about such simple thing as testing different designs to see which one is most efficient. Science is everywhere. The kit includes 12 hands on experiments. Each experiment addresses a topic related to flying. I love the explanations that come with each experiment. It helped me to figure out the main concepts involved. If it whetted our appetite for more, we got a book specifically on that subject. Explore the Kit… without the kids If you want to keep your sanity, I suggest you first explore the kit without the kids. Lock yourself up some place quite (try a bathroom, if all else fails) and read the booklet. No, it’s not the case of it being so good; you need to enjoy it in private. Remember that moment when you bring a cake with lighted birthday candles into a room? Everybody squeals with delight. The excitement is flying high. And then a birthday child blows the candles and the room erupts into cheers. I thought I would go for that set up. We all gathered around a table. With lots of whooping, cheers, and excited giggles we ceremoniously opened the box, took out the parts and…. All hell broke loose. Ok, Ok, I’m exaggerated. What really happened was that the noise level went through the roof with three excited kids simultaneously asking questions, demanding to know what each part is for and …there was me trying against all odds to concentrate my mind on what I’m reading, while talking to them “No you can’t take this out of the room! I don’t know what this is for! I’m trying to read!” Just trust me: you need to know which one is a pump and what’s there for. Let them explore the kit before you try the experiments No matter how fun are the experiments, for kids half the fun is touching everything and trying to figure out what they can do with it. Look! Mom! It’s on my head! I can even shove it in my… (ok, you don’t really want to know the specifics). One good rule to implement at this stage is that everything has to stay in one room … or you will not see some parts again until Christmas. Materials in the kit Let me tell you first about the things you will need that are NOT included in a kit: baking soda, vinegar, juice box, a pair of chairs, tape, and scissors. The kit contains: parachute, 3 balloons, 2 ping pong balls, 2 paper clips, strip of paper, dowel, string, measuring cup, paper plane models, 3 foam rockets, paper tape measure, elastic band, funnel, glider, clothespin, rocket launcher, spinner. Experiments Overview: Experiment 1 – Air Pressure: Collapse a Juice Box Buy a juice box and drink all the juice out of the box. Continue sucking on the straw once the box is empty. Experiment 2 – High-Low Pressure: Move floating ping pong balls Hang two ping pong balls about 1 inch apart and blow between them. Fast moving air causes objects to move. Experiment 3 – Flapping Motion: Make Paper Rise Place a strip of paper under a lower lip and blow. The flapping = lift and upward motion. Experiment 4 – Paper Airplane Race Fold four slightly different paper airplanes (models in the kit). Throw each one and decide which design works best. Experiment 5 – Steering Fold one more paper airplane (from the kit). Experiment with folding ailerons up and down to move airplane to the right/left. Experiment 6 – Fly a Glider Throw a glider (from the kit) and measure the distance that glider went with the tape measure (provided in the kit). Experiment 7 – How Jet Engines Work (the most exciting of all experiments) Blow up a balloon and close it with a clothespin. Tape it to a straw, which has a string passing throw it. The string is stretched between two chairs. Take the clothespin off…. The air leaving balloon pushes it forward. My kids wanted to do this one again and again and again. Experiment 8 – Launch your rocket Press down on the pump of the rocket launcher (everything included in a kit). (Very exciting!!!) Experiment 9 – Launch your rocket using baking soda and vinegar as a fuel (one of the top liked experiments) Put vinegar in a pump, put baking soda in the rocket launcher. Quickly place the pump in the rocket launcher and … BLAST into space! Experiment 10 – Helicopter fun: make a spinner soar Use a spinner (provided in a kit) to see how the moving rotors of the helicopter work. Experiment 11 – Gravity Drop a piece of a paper and pencil. The focus is on how fast something falls down. Experiment 12 – Experiment with Parachute Sail large and small parachute. Does size make a difference? In conclusion: if you are looking for a fun way to learn about flying, this kit proved to be entertaining. And with the current promotion it’s only $13 (free shipping). You can find more information on my blog http://www.kidminds.org/2015/10/soaring-into-flight-science-class-at.html

I bought this for my son's friend who turned six this summer. He has always shown a strong interest in the human body and after much research this seemed like a super age-appropriate gift to encourage his love of the body. He has loved it. His parents called me to tell me thank you and asked where I got it so they could get him more of the kits from the Magic School Bus series. I bought the one of space for my son and he (and I) have equally loved it and learned a lot. I bought this gift almost 6 months ago and when I was at their house about 3 weeks ago, I noticed he had his poster of the human body (which was a lot larger than I expected it to be) hung up on his wall across from his bed. I would highly recommend this (and any Magic School Bus kit) for any budding young scientists.

These kits are really fun! There was stuff for a total of 12 experiments in this kit. Some of them are pretty simple, but what I like is that they have good explanations of how/why the experiments resulted the way they did. It has also helped refresh my memory, which allows me to expand on the different principles. My 7 year old learned new concepts with only doing 2 of the experiments.

I homeschool my 2nd grade & preschooler. We studied rainbows briefly in our science curriculum, and did one experiment, but they were asking more questions than I had the answers to. Always wanting to encourage their educational interests, I got online for supplemental information. Given that I also have a baby, and live in a small town without any kind of good store for things like this, I don't have tons of time to spend gathering lesson plans & random materials from various places. I ordered the Magic School Bus kit because it seemed the best of the light & color options available. We LOVE the Magic School Bus series and own nearly every single book; my daughter even had a Magic School Bus themed birthday party one year. However, because of the mixed reviews I wasn't sure what to expect. Now that we've received the kit, I wanted to add my own two cents. The actual scientific materials that are included are probably things you could gather at an educational supply store and grocery store. Nothing too unusual or hard to find. Crayons, a blank CD, petri dish, eye dropper, color paddles, rainbow blasses, LED flashlight, food coloring, etc. However, having them all in the box provided is worth a significant amount to me, and me going out & purchasing the items I didn't already have at home would have cost me at least half the price of the kit. I absolutely love the booklet that comes with the items though. It's a full sheet of paper size, full color 20 page booklet that has Ms. Frizzle and all of the students featured in a very child friendly format. Each experiment begins with a question, hypothesis, method, and then a place for the child to write the results & conclusions. Complete with color drawings of the steps of the experiment too. This will make an amazing addition for her science notebook we are keeping for her portfolio. Overall, I feel like the kit is well worth the money. The full size color booklet was a definite great surprise, several of the science items we'll be able to reuse again, and most of the experiments can be done more than once. I'm planning on asking for other kits for the children for Christmas. I would higly recommend.

Maybe mine is missing something. There are quite a few materials for doing experiments regarding the body, there's a big poster that you put stickers on, there's lots of "fun facts", and a booklet for the experiments, but there's not a lot of "info". I was hoping there would be a basic breakdown on the body systems, but I had to go over most of that on my own. The experiments cover some aspects, but again, I just feel like it's missing a basic overview of each system and the major organs.

This was a great kit for my 6 year old niece. There are a lot of experiments and they didn't take a lot of time so it was easy to do one or two at a time. Yes, some of the experiments require your own materials but there are so many different experiments in the book you can get started immediately and plan for some later ones. The body poster was also a fun "reward" for completing an experiment - my niece couldn't wait to get all the stickers on her poster! We had a lot of fun with this and I think she learned a lot, too. And, if you're concerned about the content, this kit doesn't include anything on the reproductive process. I was glad I didn't have to explain reproduction to a 6 year old - that's her mom's job!

We homeschool and this went along perfect with our science curriculum (Sonlight Core B)!! My 7 year old had so much fun doing the different experiments and labeling all the bones and organs on the body poster. He particularly liked doing the lungs activity with the balloon and two liter bottle. I am looking forward to buying The Magic School Bus: The Secrets of Space kit for the next unit in our curriculum!!

I teach a small group of home schoolers aged 5-8 based on these kits and this kit was a win! Kids loved doing the lung expansion experiment (although I got water all over the place). I'm not sure if they changed the sizes, but our human body poster with stickers was life-sized. I used 4 kits for 12 kids and they were able to share with few extras being purchased (from the grocery store). I combined it with the "The World of Germs" kit for the semester. We watched "Inside Ralphie" which is about germs and the human body to tie it all together. If you choose to bend bones, the thinner ones work best but still have to soak for hours to work. Most of the experiments have immediate results, so even younger kids may enjoy this.

Okay for young child.

My daughter loved this set. We ordered it from amazon in Mexico. It took over three months to arrive and we were already finished the human body unit. She just used the set for fun and did a couple of the experiments over the summer. It was for homeschooling Grade 5 curriculum. The poster of the body is huge.

We are studying flight for homeschool this year (grade 6). These experiments are simple and could be done at grade 3-7 and teach properties of flight. Great product with simple lessons and experiments.

this one has a bit more going for it it works, but doesn't have a ton of "replay ability"

Llego muy a tiempo, es mas caja que producto, y uno de los ingredientes es BORAX, lo cual considero poco pertinente que se use en un juguete infantil. En definitiva me esperaba otra cosa.