4M KidzLabs Crystal Mining Kit

I watched my daughter do this Crystal Mining kit with my grandson- "As a 35yr old, this took 30mins! I can see why it said it could take days. I attempted the lot with my newly 5 year old. There is no way he would have stuck with it long enough to get more than one gem stone out. Thankfully he had done something similar where the instructions said to make it wet with water, that helped a ton and was the only way I completed it for him so ‘fast'. A good amount of effort went in. Displaying the gems in the provided cubes was cute. The box said there was 8 stones, but we kept going and found 13! I wouldn't recommend for a 5-6 year old as it was pretty messy." I have to say tho that my grandson enjoyed helping to mine out the gems and he loved handling them, looking at them, learning their names, matching them up to the provided pictures\description chart, and showing & describing them to me using the included magnifying glass.

My daughter has always been fascinated with rocks and minerals. These gifts with a learning and scientific element are her favorites. Excavating the crystal is fun. The kit kept her busy for a good portion of our morning. She has displayed her crystal findings in her room. This is a great gift idea for boy or girl.

If your kid is into gems, this is a wonderful STEM toy! The kit includes a rock (made of plaster) with eight individual crystals, a tool for digging the crystals, drawstring pouch for storing crystals, a brush, display, and a magnifier to examine them with. This activity is messy, but it's worth it for younger ones. It's an activity that you can do all at once or little by little. For the price, it isn't bad. It would be nice if the gems had more variety, but overall, it's been an ice activity.

This was a cool kit, but my daughter had a hard time with it. I'm not sure what the 'dirt' is made of, but it is very hard, and doesnt crumble as easily as we would have liked. I have an inpatient 9 year old, who had a hard time doing this. They give you a plastic knife/hammer that does the job, but only JUST barely. It also makes an enormous mess, so be prepared for that. But we got some really pretty rocks out of it, so that's a plus!

This was a fun project, but definitely takes some time to do. The gems are in a block of plaster and breaking it up does take some work. The tools they gave are ok, not perfect for the task. Gems were nice, as well as the holder they gave you for them.