In our home school, we’re big on hands-on activities. I’ve witnessed countless of times how my children have learned and absorbed new learning or a discovery through hands-on activities and explorations.
I have boys and although my eldest is more of a visual learner and my second son has better auditory skills (the youngest is highly kinaesthetic), I think that there’s a kinaesthetic quality in each one of them.
Most of the time we just do DIY’s at home, but I am constantly searching the internet for educational kits because when we can, we buy our children these fun kits. In my opinion, it saves me a lot of time and effort researching and collecting the materials we need for these activities, plus they’re great bonding tools while learning together.
Even as an adult I don’t know everything, and I learn some new things along with my kids such as with the ArTec Detective Lab kit that we recently used to learn the Science of fingerprints.
What’s in a Detective Lab kit?
The Detective Lab kit contains a magnifying glass, a black light pen, a couple of fingerprint dusters, a small bottle of fluorescent powder and a stamp pad.
The kit also comes with a study guide, which is cool because it contains a lot of information about fingerprints and what makes them special, and other fun facts.
For example, did you know that a cow’s nose print is that animal’s equivalent of a human fingerprint? You can actually identify cow by his muzzle patterns!
Of course the study guide comes with instructions so we can apply in action what we’ve learned about the topic.
The study guide booklet also serves as a workbook which we used to document our hands on learning.
How we used Detective Lab
I have kids 10, 6, and 4 years old. The younger ones were more interested in the stamp pad and looking at their fingerprints through the magnifying glass, so that’s what I did with them.
After stamping their fingers on the work book, I asked my 6-year old to identify the type of ridges they have on their fingers. My 6-year old thinks that his closely resembles the loop pattern. My 4-year old simply stamped his heart away on a piece of paper, haha!
My 10-year old, on the other hand, read the study guide carefully and was excited to learn about how one fingerprint is unique in the entire world. He asked me a series of what if’s afterwards which I love because I know that he’s been spurred to think and analyze by what we were doing.
I also did the glass fingerprint activity with him and he followed the instructions on the experiment page on his own. It was somewhat successful, but because the scotch tape we used was narrower than his finger, we weren’t able to lift his entire fingerprint from the glass.
My recommendations in using Detective Lab
ArTec Detective Lab is a great way to study the science and history of fingerprints. The box says it’s for kids 6 years and up and I can understand as my 4 year old wanted to spread the fluorescent powder on the table with his hands.
What worked for us is that we took the topics in little chunks instead of trying to learn everything in the book in one sitting. I let them chew on the information as long as they want.
Since my 10-year old is a visual learner, letting him read through at his own pace and time was effective. On the other hand, I guided my 6-year old with the topics by reading the texts along with him and asking him simpler questions about them. He’s still into planets and the galaxy right now, so his attention span was pretty short for the fingerprint topic.
As for my 4-year old, I just made him feel that he’s taking part in the activity by letting him hold the magnifying glass and helping him participate in the fingerprint bit. In the end, everyone had fun and that was most important for me in the learning process.
ArTec Detective Lab is being sold at Php 999.75 each by Ogalala World. The Ogalala System of Play advocates allowing a child to reach his full potential by providing hands-on activities and games designed to address all areas of learning development.
Review written by Mommy May De Jesus-Palacpac of Fully Housewifed.com
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