Kid’s Adventure Backyard Safari Explorer Kits Review

Spring & summer are ALL about being outdoors for our family and enjoying the beautiful weather and nature around us. I was thrilled to check out some of Backyard Safari’s awesome kits for young explorers! We received the following kits:

Cargo Vest

Storm Chaser Weather Pod

Adventurer Kit

Field Tools

Rock Excavator’s Field Kit

My kids are 100% boys. They are ALL about exploring, capturing bugs, digging in the dirt, collecting rocks, and anything else they can do hands on outdoors. My son LOVED the Cargo Vest. Other than the vest making him feel special my son LOVED that there are spots all over the vest to clip his tools on to. There are 8 different spots to clip tools on to as well as zipper and velcro pockets to keep treasures in.

Which was perfect because he “needed” so many tools while he was out exploring! The vest is good quality and we are planning on ironing on the collectors patches that come with special Backyard Safari products. Another reader actually mentioned to me that they use these vests in their classroom for a student who has sensory issues and they simply put heavy objects in the pockets to weight it down.

Once the kids were done exploring we then turned our adventures for the day into a new learning lesson. We decided to turn our outdoor fun into a weather lesson with Backyard Safari’s new Storm Chaser Weather Pod. As you can see we had no storms here in sunny Florida but there was plenty of other things to learn about the weather.

It was a great way to introduce our kids into temperature, wind speed, anemometers, rain gauges, a compass and more. The Storm Chaser Weather Pod, although a toy, is a pretty cool hands-on way to incorporate learning about weather into fun. The bottom clear section comes off to catch measure rain and hail and three little “feet” come out to hold the Weather Pod up. This is the only product that does need batteries to work. At the very top of the machine you see the weather vane (to see which way the wind is blowing) and anemometer cups (to gauge wind speed).

Further down you’ll see the compass, and then a digital screen which captures the air temperature. It takes a few minutes to get started so I suggest turning it on and leaving it for a while, then coming back to check on everything. This is the best most durable weather pod I’ve seen for kids anywhere. The anemometer cups fold into the pod and the weather vane detaches and neatly stores on the pod as well. It’s easy to throw in a bag or store in a backpack and doesn’t take up much room.

Next we used the Adventurer Kit and Field Tools with both also worked very well with the Rock Excavating Kit. These three are great sets to interchange together, although the Rock Excavating Kit DOES come with a small metal hammer so I don’t necessarily suggest that one for small children as it made me a little nervous with my energetic little boys! 🙂 (it is geared for children ages 5-12)

The Adventurer Kit comes with a water tight case, a retractable carabiner clip, a mini-lantern (needs batteries) and of course a field guide which comes with each product (although not all field guides are the same). The Field Tools you can see come on one ring which can also be clipped to the Cargo Vest and includes tools like a whistle, brush, tweezers, scrapers, scoops, etc. My kids used this to dust off rocks.

My oldest son especially loved this Rock Excavator’s Field Kit which included a twill canvas field bag, a rock pick hammer, a magnifying lens on a lanyard, safety goggles, and special field guide. Ours also had the bonus Rock Excavator patch!

Although my son loves bugs and the outdoors his “thing” has always been collecting rocks. Oddly enough he has chosen the drawer in my dining room table to store his rock collection. So when he saw this special bag and hammer for his rocks he was just psyched. We made a special trip to the flea market to purchase a few geodes just so that he could have some special fun with this kit.

Do take care when using this! The  rock pick hammer worked fabulously! Our only problem was that every time he hit the rock little itty bitty rock pieces would fly everywhere! Which is probably why they included the goggles in the kit which we had to use for the rest of our adventure!! We were VERY lucky to find such cool geodes at our local flea market to use. After breaking it open the boys took it out to the table in our backyard and used the Field Tools to “clean” them off.

One cool thing to note is the Rock Excavator bag has an adjustable strap so both of my kiddos could use it and not have it hanging on the ground!

We had SO many pictures in just one day of using these kits I thought a collage would capture some of the fun we had. PLUS my husband made this great video below from our adventurous day! We of course have used the kits many times since we received them but we set aside one day during Spring Break which was completely centered around using our new Backyard Safari kits.

 Overall we really enjoyed using all of the kits from Backyard Safari. I personally liked the Weather Pod since it could so easily be incorporated into science lessons. My oldest son loved the Rock Excavator kit and the Cargo Vest. My little guy liked the Field Tools since they were easy for him to use. They are all really nice and good quality. None of the pieces are easy to break and can be easily interchanged with many different scenarios and mixed with different sets. If your kids love exploring check out these great products from Backyard Safari!

Disclosure: I was not compensated for this review. I received the above products to use in order to form my own opinions. All opinions are my own. 

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