Reviewed by
Mary
Blurb first:
Letterbox Lab provide innovative children’s science kits as subscription boxes.
They have slightly altered postage charges; the Explore Box postage is now £2 rather than 89p, but the Investigate Box postage has been reduced to £2. This more accurately reflects their postage costs, but note they are still absorbing some of these costs. They have also rounded up the box prices (by a huge 1p!). I should thow in here that the value is still excellent.
Two different versions:
The Explore Box (£8 + £2 postage) is for kids aged 6+ and contains a least an hour’s worth of fun science.
The Investigate Box (£22 + £2 postage) has more experiments and more items of collectible lab equipment with enough to keep a junior scientist busy for 3 or 4 hours.
Both kits have full-colour illustrated instructions and online videos to make it easy to do all the experiments.
On to the actual review!
My lovely helper is my daughter, Little C, age seven. I was sent an Explore Box, which is perfectly designed for her age group.
This arrived just before the Christmas holidays, but we waited until we had a bit more time to get it all done. It actually took a couple of sessions, which is why you can see two different outfits!
Anyway, the box arrived through the door as usual.
This month’s theme is Bubbles and Boats.
Every child loves bubbles!
There were five experiments in this month’s box.
The first one, Bubbleology, was various ways of making bubbles, with the mixture enclosed.
We also got to make different bubble wands!
The next one, Cububble, was quite challenging!
First we had to figure out how to make a cube with the pipe cleaners and straws.
Then we mixed up more bubble liquid, a big amount this time!
The idea was to get a cube-shaped bubble in the middle of the frame, as a result of surface tension from the six sides.
This took quite a few goes.
But finally, success!
OK, this one was pretty small, but it was an amazing effect!
Double Bubble was a lot of fun, and not as hard as you would think!
It was amazing how poking the straw into the bubble didn’t actually make it pop!
Finally! A bubble within a bubble!.
We didn’t managed to make a third one, but either way, this was very simple and great fun.
Sail the Soapy Sea was short and sweet.
I can confirm that the drop of soap did indeed make the boat zoom across the sink (a bit tricky to photograph though!)
Neither of us thought Unburstabubble would work. We tried it over the sink for safety.
But hey! Pencils through the bag and no leaks at all!
What a lot of fun this was.
Bubbles are such a simple thing, and every child is familiar with blowing bubbles. This box expanded on this play wonderfully!
The Cububble was especially fascinating, even though it was rather difficult to get it right!
I really like the way we’ve learned to make bubble wands. Pipe cleaners and straws, that’s a trick we’ll be using again!
There’s so much at the moment with girls and STEM subjects, and this is a wonderful and totally neutral introduction to science for all children. The little cartoon characters, Meg and Pico, that guide you through the activities are a boy and a girl, and it’s frequently Meg who takes the lead. I don’t know if this was intentional or not on the part of the creators, but it’s very encouraging.
As always, tremendous fun from Letterbox Lab!
By Evelyn 
