National Geographic Mega Crystal Growing Kit - Grow 6 Crystals with Light-Up Stand, Science Gifts for Kids 8-12

The cell phone picture does not do justice to how impressive these crystals look. This is an excellent kit that surpasses our expectations. My ONLY minor gripe is there is only 4 crystal growing contains while there are 5 positions in the little display base (thus my picture only shows 4). However they provide enough material to grow 8 sets of crystals (4 at a time) so not really a problem.I understand that not everyone has been able to get great results, but this is pure science people. If the results are not as expected there is a reason, and it is NOT due to the poor quality of the kit. Here are a couple things I did which might have contributed to the good results:1) Completely dissolve ALL powder into exactly one cup of water. To do this I usually had to re-heat the solution after adding the powder (I used a microwave to do this).2) Grow the crystals in a location free from any vibrations. I used the concrete floor of our basement, but the main thing I was trying to avoid is counter-tops and other locations in high traffic areas of our wood frame houses. We have two young kids, and they love to run around. I figured if I can feel the vibration of their activity in the floors, then those parts of the house are probably not ideal crystal growing areas.

Got this kit for my son last christmas, we have finished growing all the crystals. Such a fun activity to do with your kiddo on a rainy day. Kit came with everything we needed and the instructions were easy to follow. Loved using this kit because it also leaves your kid with somthinf they can keep. My son is 10 years old and he was able to do most of it himself!

So far we have only made two but they turned out great! I did the tip about covering it for 24 hours on the first day, I think it helped.

This was more pricey than what I normally spend on a 'toy' so I was hoping that my splurge would not be in vain. It was given to my 8 year old daughter for Christmas and she was excited when she saw it. The instructions were clear and the growing cups were of good quality. We left the crystals in for 11 days (it recommends 4-10 days) and they were very developed and beautiful once we took them out! The colors of the crystals were not as vibrant as in the pictures though. They were very lightly colored, only slightly more than white. The "seed" rocks (what the crystal grows on) were very difficult to remove and even though I was as careful as possible, the yellow crystal dissolved and broke apart in my hand while I was trying to extract the seed rock. (The seed rocks only need to be removed if you want to display the crystals on the lighted base so that they can light up from the LED's underneath them, otherwise the seed rocks can be left in the crystals). I like that the kit came with more crystals to grow than there are spaces on the lighted base (I think there are 7-8 different colors?) because it gives my daughter options of which she wants to display and change around and you know we girls like changing things around :) Because of the expense this is probably a one-time buy.

This was a gift for my 9 year old for Christmas. He liked it, easy to do and the crystals mostly did great. Out of the 6 , only 1 didn't grow very well. Unsure why. Be aware the light up device only holds 5 crystals, not 6.The instruction booklet is outdated. It sent you to a video link that doesn't work, but it's easy enough to youtube "national geographic crystal growing". Another point is that the video instructions conflicted with the booklet. One said "grow in the dark".. the other said "grow in the light/warm room".. In the end we did half the batch like the video and the other half like the booklet. It was a great learning experience in experimenting and teaching my son to observe which was 'better'.The box also contained just 2 plastic containers.. but we used glass cups from our kitchen since you have to wait 7+ days. We experimented which did better in the soft plastic container v.s. glass cup..

This is so cool! My son and I enjoyed making these crystals together. He now displays them in his room.

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