Do you kids love doing “science” experiments like mine? I mean slime, baking soda volcanoes, and mixing together whatever ingredients you’ll give them? How about playing with lights, making paths line up for marbles to follow, or asking a million questions about how things work? Welcome to the family! Our newest toy to satisfy this craving for science and engineering: the Little Tikes STEM Jr. Wonder Lab. This Wonder Lab table gives kids a space to do experiments, figure out what conductors are, play with light and color, make a marble path, and more. My 5 year old tells me “this is the BEST thing we’ve ever gotten from Little Tikes!” (And we LOVE our Little Tikes products over here!!!).
STEM Jr. Wonder Lab
The favorite part of the STEM Jr. Wonder Lab is the experiment table. It comes with beakers, 3 big test tubes, mixing spoons, and a dropper (all plastic and durable, woot!). My favorite part: the removable plastic tray. My 5 year old can experiment to his heart’s desire, then drop the tray and all the pieces into the sink to be washed for next time. He loves making baking soda volcanoes, mixing food coloring in the test tubes and then together, making slime, and doing whatever else he can imagine with whatever ingredients I’ll let him use. The test tubes set nicely in holders behind the tray, the big beaker holds all the spoons to the side, and the flask sets in a holder to the left. There is a little space for setting other items, and a great storage space with 4 cubbies underneath.
The deep tray holds liquids well, but we set the whole thing up in our kitchen anyways. This way we have easy access to most of the ingredients needed, it’s a great thing for the kids to play on while I cook or clean up, and any spills or messes are on an easy-to-clean tile floor. After a few vinegar spills and dripped water from the sink to table, we also laid out a towel underneath. (My kids are messy, what can I say?)
The Wonder Lab comes with a handful of cards with experiments like Vampire Blood and Slime (and many more, as well as cards about the marble maze, circuit center, and sorting things in the storage space underneath by color or number). They aren’t perfect, like we add more baking soda to the slime, but they are a great start. The plastic holder for the cards is hard to move them on, but a great way to keep them together so they don’t get spread all around the kitchen. And the cards can be hooked on the side or easily clipped right in the middle of the station to read and look at throughout activities. The pictures on the cards are easy to follow, so you don’t necessarily have to read to figure them out. The words have notes about how things work, educational bits, and a link to learn more.
The second favorite part is the on-off lever and song! Never thought this would be my kids’ favorite, but there is a lever on the right front that flips up to turn on and down to turn off. When turned on, it sings a catchy intro song, turns on the light, and then can say little encouraging phrases if the kids hit the red button. The light’s color is controlled by the white dial, easy to switch to whatever color desired. The blue lever is supposed to change the intensity, but seems more like it changes how fast it flashes.
Right above that is a circuit center. Two clips can be connected to any item to see if it is a conductor and turns on the light. My kids like to just clip the clips to each other so that the light will work, but once in a while they will test different items to see if they are “conductable.” I think this part will be more interesting to them when they are a little older and more interested in how electricity and currents work.
The whole Wonder Lab has an on-off switch on back, right next to the battery compartment. We leave ours on so my kids can turn it on and off with the big lever. If they don’t push the buttons or move the levers for more than a few minutes, it says goodbye and turns itself off.
The marble maze part of the Wonder Lab doesn’t get much play here. The idea is cool, and it’s fun to get the pieces lined up so the plastic balls get to the bottom, but it’s difficult to do. The 8 maze pieces are reversible so there are many different ways to set it up, but they don’t seem to line up well most of the time. The way the pieces push into the holes makes them offset from each other either side-to-side or front-to-back just enough that the ball can’t fall through them. There are ways to set it up so the ball goes smoothly, but it’s too difficult for the age range. I had it set up for a while, then my kids decided it should work for liquids too, which is just messy since there are holes in the bottom ball-holder, so the liquids drain all the way down the leg to the floor.
The last feature I want to highlight is the bubbler. Turn the red crank to make air come through the tube and bubble in whatever liquid is in the beaker at the end. The dial just spins and doesn’t actually measure the pressure. At first we couldn’t get it to bubble without turning the wheel painfully fast, so we disconnected our tubes (thinking it was hopeless). Then my son hooked them back up and it bubbles like a charm! A dab of soap and half full of water, the beaker bubbles soap foam right out the top with easy turning. It’s also a way to mix liquid creations, though a stir stick (not near as fun) is more effective. So fun!
The Wonder Lab is marketed for ages 3+. I’ve got to say, it’s geared more toward 5-8 year olds. My almost-4-year-old is interested and enjoys for a few minutes, but my 5 year old is truly enthralled and capable of operating every part.
Seriously, I’m impressed with this Wonder Lab! The first morning we had it set up, my 5 year old played with it for 3 hours straight. Not only played, but washed and dried his own dirty tools, asked kindly for help with the parts he wasn’t sure about, put his ingredients away when he was done, and helped me clean up breakfast so I could help him experiment. He’s gone back to it at least 3 times a day since then to do more experiments, play with the colored light, and find out what might be a “conductable.” He even sings the intro song!
Like I said, we LOVE Little Tikes here, there are at least 10 Little Tikes products in our backyard alone, and the Little Tikes STEM Jr. Wonder Lab is one of our favorite products. Check it out for yourself online, or on Facebook and Twitter.
I received a STEM Jr. Wonder Lab to review with my family, opinions are 100% my own and not influenced by compensation.
Could you provide a list of ingredients you would need for some experiments? My son is getting this for Christmas and I thought about going ahead and buying everything we may need
How do u turn it on?