This month’s Letterbox Lab is called Keep it Secret, and is all about how science helps to keep and reveal secrets! My lovely helper is my daughter, Little C, who is seven. I was sent an Explore Box, which is perfectly designed for her age group.
It costs £8 + £2 p+p. More subscription details are at the end of the review.
The box is designed to fit through the mailbox!
A brief introduction to this month’s projects.
Our first activity was Disappearing Messages.
The printed message really did look like a regular piece of paper.
But after stirring for a few moments it disintegrated completely!
We also tried the extra experiment, where we (or rather Little C) wrote very strongly on the enclosed blank dissolving paper. It was left for a minute or so to float in the water, then given a very gentle stir…
And the letters were left floating behind!
It didn’t work perfectly (and the counter isn’t the ideal background) but you can see a few of the letters on the top of the water.
Next was Forensic Fingers.
Making prints on paper was great fun! The mica powder was also a very pretty colour.
Then it was time to try out the proper card.
We also each made a fingerprint in the booklet. It showed pictures of different kinds of fingerprint types, so we compared ours and figured out what the patterns were. We learned that no two fingerprints are exactly alike!
The next experiment, See Heat, was very effective.
There was a pot of colour changing slime included in the box, so the first thing we did was to try to warm it in our hands.
We couldn’t get this to work, though the booklet did warn that it was difficult to get hands hot enough to make it change.
So time for another tactic!
This time we used hot water to heat up a spoon.
Can you see how the colour has changed from purple to bright blue?
Finally, another box transformation, into a Picoscope! Or rather, a periscope.
This was quite simple to make. It involved cutting slots in the box and sticking on the mirrors included.
Little C measured the correct size, then I did the cutting part, as cutting cardboard can be tricky for little hands. Little C stuck on the mirrors. They were plastic, so no sharp edges!
It took a bit of fiddling to get the mirrors at the correct angle, but it worked perfectly!
This month we worked through the experiments quite quickly.
The disappearing messages were a lot of fun, especially as Little C is quite keen on spy things! We decided that this kind of paper would be an essential part of any spy kit.
The fingerprints were interesting, but we found that they worked better on plain paper rather than the slightly shiny surface of the booklet and fingerprint card. We had to try a few times to make them clear enough to see the patterns properly. The mica powder was a lovely colour, and Little C remembered using mica in Explore Box 3. However I think the fingerprint patterns would have been a little easier to see using ink rather than powder, though it did demonstrate that fingerprints are tiny ridges in the skin.
The colour change slime was brilliant. I think this was definitely the most exciting item, especially as you can have a lot of fun making different patterns. We also did more things like putting the whole thing in warm water (sealed in a bag!) and then seeing how it changed colour underneath after sitting on the cold counter.
Little C knew all about periscopes as her school has one that the children can play with! It was very interesting, though, to see exactly how they work by making one from scratch. I really like that some activities use the box itself, most notably the Orrery in Explore Box 10.
Letterbox Lab is a terrific way of introducing young children to scientific principles though fun activities. While some of the details are advanced for this age group, as Little C gets older and does more science in school she will remember the things she has done in these activities and will be able to link them in with greater understanding. It’s wonderful how much can be learned without even realizing it when play is involved!
Take a look at other Letterbox Lab reviews here!
Letterbox Lab provide innovative children’s science kits as subscription boxes.
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) for kids aged 8+ 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.
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A different version of this review was first published on allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
The colour changing slime looks like so much fun!
It was really cool! Plus the blue colour is beautiful, a great contrast to the purple.
Thanks for reading 💖