Science Reviews

When I first looked at this neat biome and read the advertisement, it looked great.But I soon found out when I got it for Christmas that it was not so great of a toy after all.The first thing I noticed was the size of the biome.It was disapointingly small. The second thing I noticed was how missleading the instuctions were.The instructions suggested putting a huge corn snake in with all these plants in a biome and you can't fit even the smallest plant.The third thing I noticed was that the temperture was not accurate ,and after a very short period of time the humididy gauge stopped working all together.Over all I rate it one star.

My six-year-old recently received this toy as a gift. It consists of a plastic dome containing a plastic tree and plastic cave, and it has depressions in its base that can be filled with soil or water. It has a light that can change color, and an electronic readout of time, temperature and humidity. It also comes with a fairly detailed booklet on setting up the terrarium. You will have to add your own soil, plants and creatures, and the booklet has several different suggestions. It does need a bit of simple assembly.

We decided to create a rainforest-type habitat. We added some potting soil and collected a few slugs and snails (the kit includes a pair of long plastic tweezers and a collection jar). We also planted a couple of plants from outside into the potting soil. It was simple to set up and to transfer the creatures inside. The dome also has a magnifying glass through which you can observe the dome's contents.

My daughter really likes her dome and has been enjoying watching her creatures. Overall, I think this is a nifty toy. So far, it has also been escape-proof.

But I have a couple of caveats. 1. You can't put the dome into direct sunlight or else the contents would fry; but without sunlight, some plants won't survive for long. 2. The booklet suggests perhaps buying small creatures such as lizards or frogs to put in the dome, and it does instruct the owner to get appropriate information on caring for those animals. But I think the dome is too small to be a permanent home for anything but the tiniest vertebrates. 3. There's no way to clean the dome without opening the whole thing up, which would require either letting your creatures go or transferring them tempararily to another container. This transfer should be easy with slugs and snails, but would be trickier with faster-moving beasts. 4. Once you set up the water in the dome, you can't easily move it without spilling. So decide where you want it to be and then keep it there.

this is a really really really good science thing, but you can get all this stuff from home, i would buy it though