Review: Education Science Kits
Posted by benbacardi,
For the first time since the start of the LEGO Education line, LEGO has introduced sets specifically intended to be purchased as regular sets, rather than through schools and other learning environments. The four LEGO Education Science Kits are available as standard retail sets and are part of a range LEGO is calling Learning at Home.
But what are they, and how do they differ from regular LEGO sets? I've had a look at the format the sets take, how they intend to provide education and learning opportunities, and whether they actually have any useful educational value.
Summary
An interesting concept that doesn't quite hit the mark, but the minifigures have some great new prints in lovely colour scheme!
- Good minifigures
- New, unique concept
- Educational value feels forced
- Limited brick selection for free builds
- Expensive for what they are
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
The Concept
The four LEGO Education Science Kit sets are designed to teach children about a specific area of science by providing them with a framework to both learn and play at the same time. The four sets available now focus on space exploration and animal conservation. Explained at the front of the first instruction manual in each set, the "Kits" contain two or four experiments with three "phases" of play: Build, Solve, and Invent.
The Build phase is classic LEGO—follow the instructions to construct a model that is the starting point of the experiment. For instance, this could be a penguin and an icy slope, or a Mars landing vehicle. There's always a flaw, though...
… because the Solve phase is where the builder must use the bricks provided from the next bag to fix that flaw, in whatever way they like. There are no hints beyond some very basic outlines and cartoon drawings of a potential solution.
Finally, another bag of bricks provides more "free play", where you are encouraged to be creative and Invent a small new model within the guidelines—such as a boat for a photographer, or a lunar habitat.
The sets are clearly designed to be used under adult supervision, as the instructions include tips for how you can support your child's learning and spark their curiosity by asking specific questions about what their thought process and what they're trying to achieve.
The Sets
The four sets all follow the pattern above. Below I have summarised each mission, and taken a look at the minifigures included in the sets, which are arguably the most interesting aspect.
45200 Moon Mission Science Kit
£44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 • 519 pieces
The Moon Mission science kit contains two "experiments" for children to try their hand at, and is aimed at ages 8+.
- The first is intended to teach stability—children are asked to build a rocket and a small section of Earth, space, and the Moon, solve the problem of the rocket falling over by designing a landing structure, and invent a small lunar base for the astronauts.
- The second is about growing plants in space. You build a lunar greenhouse for some plants, solve the problem of transporting water to the greenhouse, and invent a moon-based kitchen to make food with the plants.
Two minifigures come with the set, one for each mission. Both are astronauts, and I was pleased to see they are wearing different outfits. The colour scheme of all four sets seems to be white, teal, and coral, which works very well in my opinion. The female astronaut is wearing a primarily white flight suit, with a small Classic Space logo and identification tag on the torso. She comes with both hair—a dark brown bob—and a helmet, and has a choice of two different smiling expressions.
The second astronaut's space suit looks more heavy duty, suited for life in space rather than during flight, and is primarily teal with coral arms. Unlike his counterpart, he has printed legs with pockets and high-visibility stripes, and his torso is much more detailed, showing a utility belt with a control panel and walkie talkie. He is a very confident chap, wearing glasses atop a cheeky smile on one side, and giving a wink the other.
Both torsos are new to these Education sets.
45201 Antarctic Animals Science Kit
£44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 • 461 pieces
The smallest of the four sets takes us to the South Pole; the Antarctic Animals science kit contains two experiments, aimed at ages 7+.
- Build an icy slope and a pair of penguins, solve the problem caused by a hole in the ice, and invent a small boat for the scientist to observe and take photos from.
- Build a blue whale and some krill for it to eat, solve the problem of the food falling out of the whale's mouth, and invent a small boat for the scientist (yes, again).
Once again, a minifigure is included for each activity, one male, one female. The scientist studying the penguins is wearing a dark blue and teal jacket with a small emblem that looks like a compass rose with an S or a path inside it. He has floppy brown hair and and two happy expressions on his stubble-dotted face. The hair can be swapped for a helmet when on the water.
The whale scientist looks to be wearing a much warmer coral padded jacket with teal arms, which zips up the middle, and also includes the same compass emblem. The outfit is finished with a utility belt to which a few pieces of equipment are attached, and the same teal legs as the explorer astronaut above. I like the dual-moulded beanie hat, and her two expressions include a satisfied smile on one side and a more worried or confused mouth beneath orange safety goggles on the other.
Once again, both torsos are new.
45202 Mars Mission Science Kit
£89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 • 933 pieces
The first of the two larger sets, aimed at children aged 9 and above, includes four independent space-themed missions. As before, each mission has its own instruction booklet and follows the same format, using between 3 to 5 bags for each.
- Build an astronaut training simulator, solve the problem of the simulator falling over, and invent a spaceship-like pod for the astronaut to sit in during training.
- Build a crewed Mars landing vehicle, solve the problem of landing supports, and invent a resupply pod.
- Build a Mars base, solve the problem of damage caused by Martian winds, and invent a communications tower.
- Build a Mars rover, solve the problem of rocks in your way, and invent a collection area for the rock samples.
Four minifigures are included in this larger set. All astronauts, three reuse the same torsos found in the smaller Moon mission set above, but the first wears a teal and dark green tracksuit instead. She is the astronaut included with the training simulator mission, and as such has no need for a spacesuit or helmet. She doesn't look to be enjoying her training, with two expressions varying from slightly worried to very worried!
The astronaut in charge of piloting the landing vehicle is wearing the same flight suit as his lunar counterpart, and he also has a very worried expression until you manage to build his spaceship some landing supports, at which point you can flip his head to a satisfied lopsided smile.
The final two share the same more heavy-duty spacesuits. I feel very sorry for the male astronaut attempting to protect his shelter from the Martian weather, as his is the most terrified of all the expressions! I like the combination of wavy, tousled hair and the sideburn prints on his head.
The final astronaut is a blonde female, the pilot of the rover. She's wearing a very determined expression on one side, and yet another worried face on the other! I would have thought any space programme would have chosen more imperturbable candidates for the astronaut cohort chosen to colonise Mars!
45203 Arctic Animals Science Kit
£89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 • 1134 pieces
Finally, the last of the sets also includes four animal science missions, this time at the top of the world in the Arctic.
- Build an arctic cabin for the scientists, solve the problem of getting down from the roof of the cabin, and invent a sledge for the research equipment.
- Build a walrus and its baby, solve the problem of the walrus not being able to cuddle its baby (yes, really), and invent an underwater vehicle for collecting poo samples.
- Build a baby reindeer and mum, solve the problem of the reindeer being cold, and invent a hide for the scientists to observe from.
- Build a polar bear and an ice floe, solve the problem of the bear not being able to climb onto the slippery floe, and invent a suitable vehicle for the scientist.
As is the pattern now, each mission contains its own minifigure. The first two repeat the outfits from the Antarctic set, although this time the dark blue and coral jacket is repurposed as a diving suit, complete with teal air tanks and a snorkel. The female scientist has two very determined expressions, one with a distinct squint (perhaps the bright sunlight reflecting of the snow is to blame). The diver has a confident smile on one side, and an unusual closed-eye, open-mouth expression on the other.
The remaining two scientists are both also wearing very warm zip-up jackets, though different to the quilted one used before. Primarily coral, with a large teal strip across the chest, the jacket features the compass emblem and a zip pocket on the other side. Both also wearing gloves, the bespectacled female scientist has wavy blonde hair and a happy or worried expression, whereas the male has a dark beard and moustache and wearing a cosy winter hat.
A look at a mission
Let's look a bit more in-depth at one of the missions—the final Mars mission:
How could you move rocks on Mars?
This Physical Science experiment is based on testing and improving a device that changes potential energy into kinetic energy. Potential energy is stored energy that can be transferred into different forms when you need it. An object has kinetic energy when it moves.
One kind of potential energy comes from gravity. If you increase the weight of the object, it has more potential energy. This makes more kinetic energy when the object moves, making the object move further.
The build phase has us using a couple of bags of bricks to construct a six-wheeled Mars buggy. I quite like most of the design—the cockpit lifts forwards on hinges to allow access to the single seat cabin, there's a loading bay in the middle with a storage crate, and a second seating area beneath an observation dome houses controls for a robotic drill and a magnifying glass. The strange blocky contraption at the rear on the right, however, is very crudely built!
It turns out that this is the part of the buggy that needs to be solved. It is an arm designed to kick rocks along the ground—pressing on the Technic leaver releases the arm and it swings down—but it doesn't have enough power to move anything very far.
The instruction booklet tells us, without words, what the problem is, and gives us some hints in the form of the dashed areas of how to solve it. In this case, we're meant to use the bricks in bag 12 to increase the height and length of the arm, to give it more power when it swings down—this is the "potential and kinetic energy" teachable moment.
Opening bag 12 reveals a rather disappointing selection of bricks…
But I did my best to crudely increase the power of the arm as instructed! It looks even more ridiculous now than it did before, but it does work—the provided rock travels a lot further than it did before.
With that solved, the only question is where to gather all these rocks for analysis. Bag 13 provides the parts necessary for the invent phase, where we are encouraged to build a collection area.
We have a few more pieces this time around, but although it is entirely free-build, they really are leading you in a specific direction with their choice of parts and the dotted outline in the instruction manual.
Below is my rudimentary attempt. I didn't use all the pieces, and I didn't spend very long on it—I'll be honest, it wasn't particularly fun to build within such constraints. The limited number and utility of the pieces available really only led in one direction with very little room for creativity.
Verdict
I always appreciate LEGO trying something new, and I can see what they are getting at with these sets. The build, solve, invent concept is a neat idea, encouraging children to not just play with the bricks but to introduce various challenges and iterate on solutions for them. However, the experiments feel somewhat forced, with an odd selection of scientific concepts applied where they wouldn't be in reality—a Mars rover would never fling rocks around with a giant kicking arm, and penguins don't construct safe paths down icy slopes before diving into the sea.
On the initial page of each instruction booklet there are suggested questions for the parents to prompt their children with when thinking about solutions, but in reality most children are just going to want to play with the LEGO, and anything they do learn from the brief science lesson is unlikely to stick, in my opinion. Even during the free build sections, the limited selection of bricks constrains their creativity and leads to models that are far less creative than they would otherwise build with the rest of their collection.
On a practical note, the way the sets rely on specific numbered bags for the free-build sections while others are reserved for the instruction-led builds makes replaying the activities later on slightly awkward. Unless you’ve been careful to keep track of which elements came from which bag, it’s very easy to incorporate a piece into a solve or invent free build that’s needed further on in the instructions, forcing you to dismantle part of your own model in order to continue.
I do love the cohesive colour scheme chosen throughout all four sets, though—it feels suitably "educational" and "science" to me, and the minifigures are pretty good. Are they worth the relatively high price, though? Personally, unless my children particularly asked for one of them, I would rather spend the money on a set with more playability. LEGO has plenty of educational advantages already—improving fine motor skills and creativity to name only a couple—without having to explicitly force it into the sets.
- Buy 45200 Moon Mission Science Kit at LEGO.com »
- Buy 45201 Antarctic Animals Science Kit at LEGO.com »
- Buy 45202 Mars Mission Science Kit at LEGO.com »
- Buy 45203 Arctic Animals Science Kit at LEGO.com »
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16 comments on this article
I definitely think this is one of those reviews where the target audience ie. children should have been enlisted to test the sets.
The idea seems similar to the Lego City Missions sets from a few years ago, only with printed instructions instead of the online-only ones from those. They involved solving how to finish a build to complete a task:
https://brickset.com/sets/theme-City/subtheme-Missions
This is unfortunately nothing new. LEGO has always produced expensive educational sets - and I don't know if schools can get subsidies to buy experimental bricks, or if TLG is just vastly overestimating how much funding goes into public education. Or, option 3, maybe this is part of a plan to pay teachers in LEGO bricks.
It's not that I don't like this sets. Neat colour-scheme, fun builds, I'm on board - but if we're expected to pay 30% extra just to teach children "how not to make your LEGO thing fall", I feel that's something regular sets do just fine. I don't see the additional educational value here. Schools, give that money to your teachers instead.
Thanks for the review, @benbacardi! Would be interesting to see a review of you guys for classic educational sets, ie. those that aren't sold to the public and get a verdict if they are better of these four.
@chrisaw said:
"I definitely think this is one of those reviews where the target audience ie. children should have been enlisted to test the sets. "
To be honest, my son and daughter are both target age and they did work through the first couple of missions but had little interest in continuing. I should have included that more explicitly in the review, you're right, though it did influence my overall comments.
There are cheaper and better LEGO sets to teach kids stuff. The sets look fine, though.
Pretty much confirms everything I thought on first look when they were revealed. Limited educational value, and the target audience would find it boring.
I know its not impossible to make educational experiments fun, so I've really got no clue why and how LEGO keep missing the mark.
Homeschooling for the win!
@Crux said:
"This is unfortunately nothing new. LEGO has always produced expensive educational sets - and I don't know if schools can get subsidies to buy experimental bricks, or if TLG is just vastly overestimating how much funding goes into public education. Or, option 3, maybe this is part of a plan to pay teachers in LEGO bricks.
It's not that I don't like this sets. Neat colour-scheme, fun builds, I'm on board - but if we're expected to pay 30% extra just to teach children "how not to make your LEGO thing fall", I feel that's something regular sets do just fine. I don't see the additional educational value here. Schools, give that money to your teachers instead."
At least in the US, schools can receive subsidies. A school that one of my friends worked at had a few mindstorms EV3 sets they used for a STEM program that they gave me after they phased them out of the curriculum.
@Iconetic said:
" @Crux said:
"This is unfortunately nothing new. LEGO has always produced expensive educational sets - and I don't know if schools can get subsidies to buy experimental bricks, or if TLG is just vastly overestimating how much funding goes into public education. Or, option 3, maybe this is part of a plan to pay teachers in LEGO bricks.
It's not that I don't like this sets. Neat colour-scheme, fun builds, I'm on board - but if we're expected to pay 30% extra just to teach children "how not to make your LEGO thing fall", I feel that's something regular sets do just fine. I don't see the additional educational value here. Schools, give that money to your teachers instead."
At least in the US, schools can receive subsidies. A school that one of my friends worked at had a few mindstorms EV3 sets they used for a STEM program that they gave me after they phased them out of the curriculum."
So, does that mean they weren't happy with mindstorms, too?
Having worked in both k-12 education and having been a university professor, I think the "Education" value added here is a bit of a stretch (and certainly doesn't justify the price). With the right narrative aimed at the right audience, nearly all Lego sets can be considered educational, but these offerings are, at best, on par with "regular" kits we've already seen coming out of City and Friends and IMO a step down from things like their Discovery theme from twenty years ago. Phasing out the Spike sets is a blow to long term consumers of Lego Education sets, but pitching these as specialized educational tools is adding insult to injury. Who is running Lego Education these days?
One of the Summary points was that these are: "Expensive for what they are".
Perhaps the design or execution is not what you expect for this price. But as far as price per piece, these are a LOT less expensive than Star Wars and most City sets (in USA).
Thanks for the review.
I like the idea and colour scheme, but I see more educational value in just giving kids some of the basic Lego sets and let them build from imagination.
Of course that's not for everyone. So maybe bring back the Lego ideas Books?
These seem like the kind of thing you'd get if you observed a small number of education workers in a very specific workshop - exactly what you need for one particular guided session and not much good for anything else....
I love the minifigs and very much hope to see them turn up on pick a brick or build a minifig eventually, but otherwise I don’t feel these hold all that much appeal. I’d hoped for more flexibility in what parts were provided, to be honest.
It always hurts my heart a little to see a British person use the American term (homeschooling) and not ours (home education). I do understand that when the media started covering us more they were lazy and didn’t bother to actually get the usage right, though, and thus the American one ended up better known here. But I don’t have to *like* it. Especially given the philosophical differences.
@jkb said:
" @Iconetic said:
" @Crux said:
"This is unfortunately nothing new. LEGO has always produced expensive educational sets - and I don't know if schools can get subsidies to buy experimental bricks, or if TLG is just vastly overestimating how much funding goes into public education. Or, option 3, maybe this is part of a plan to pay teachers in LEGO bricks.
It's not that I don't like this sets. Neat colour-scheme, fun builds, I'm on board - but if we're expected to pay 30% extra just to teach children "how not to make your LEGO thing fall", I feel that's something regular sets do just fine. I don't see the additional educational value here. Schools, give that money to your teachers instead."
At least in the US, schools can receive subsidies. A school that one of my friends worked at had a few mindstorms EV3 sets they used for a STEM program that they gave me after they phased them out of the curriculum."
So, does that mean they weren't happy with mindstorms, too?"
It's more likely that they weren't happy with the lack of backward compatibility as TLG evolved the product. It's very hard to manage a lab for kids and have a standard curriculum if you don't have a homogenous baseline to start with. It's hard enough to keep order in a STEM lab filled with kids without having to deal with this _table_ working with an ancient RCX and those tables using EV3s and while this table is using SPIKE; parts and cables get mixed up and half the class time is wasted just trying to mix and match compatible components. Over time things wear out and replacements just aren't available anymore and sooner or later you just have to rebaseline on the next generation because you don't have enough of one generation of controller brick (and family) to service an entire class at once. Even with subsidies, that can be a pretty expensive and frustrating proposition for a lot of schools.