This post created in partnership with Smithsonian to feature their Smithsonian Mega Science Lab Kit & Jellyfish Aquarium.
My first love is and will always be science when it comes to education. It’s what hooked me into learning as a child and has proved to be a fantastic tool to turn so much of life into a learning lesson! So as you can imagine my kids always have something STEM related at their disposal to learn from!
Whether you’re looking for a holiday gift or a homeschool supplement, the Smithsonian Mega Science Lab provides great hands on STEM activities that are great for interaction with your kids! Scroll below to see our new Smithsonian Jellyfish Aquarium!
We have been enjoying the Smithsonian Mega Science Lab Kit which has six different science activities – all in different areas of science!
It includes:
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dinosaur dig kit
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bug habitat dome
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mini volcano
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weather station (with rain gauge!)
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crystal growing kit
Although the box looks small in the photo above it’s quite large! It’s only dwarfed by the even larger poster that’s included! One side of the poster includes instructions for each of the science experiment kits included in the Mega Science Kit set and the other side expands on what you learn through the activities!
The size of the included dinosaur dig kit made my eyes bug out a little – it was huge!! Although the set is geared for ages 10+ all three of my kids were impressed with the huge block to dig!
It included safety glasses and tools to use while digging!
Coming from a family who has numerous bug “hampers” and aquariums in our house filled with snakes, caterpillars, lizards, frogs and toads, and anything else we can get our hands on – we actually really enjoyed the tiny bug habitat! It was SO cute and included a small bug magnifier on the top of the habitat.
Although it’s not big enough for lizards or frogs, we found plenty of jumping spiders and garden snails to put inside and watch!
The weather station science activity has been a fun one that my older kids have been enjoying. Particularly because of our active hurricane season this year! Now they can monitor the amount of rain that we have been receiving!
I appreciate that it includes both Farenheit AND Celcius degree markings. We also really liked the wind chill chart as a handy guide to use when comparing the wind speeds with temperatures.
The Earth model was extremely simple to put together and included some paints with a brush. It might be helpful to print out a flat world map so that your child can try to recreate continents on their blue globe!
We haven’t been finished all of the activities simply because we’ve had the Mega Science kit just a couple of days, but it retails for $29.99. So that breaks down to about $5 per activity which is pretty reasonable – especially considering you can use this for your entire family regardless of age span!
Buy the Smithsonian Mega Science Lab at Target here!
Make sure to see our video to watch 60 seconds of Jellyfish Dancing!
We LOVE watching our Jellyfish dance! It’s a mesmerizing sensory experience for sure!
It’s extremely simple to set up and was bigger than I was expecting. Just add 3 AA’s in the bottom, tap water with 2 drops of dish soap, and plop your jellyfish into the aquarium! The biggest tip I have for you is to make sure there are no air bubbles in the jellyfish otherwise they won’t float right!
The motor does make a background noise which is fairly loud which is great if you want some white noise. But it looks AWESOME and is incredibly brightly lit with the lights off! They’re so delicate and fun to watch!
You can find this Jellyfish Aquarium Science Kit at Target!