Get the Best Family Activities
Slimed!
Nickelodeon may have been sliming celebs at their Kids’ Choice Awards for years (and on Slime Time Live long before that), but now your kid can have some surprise gross-out fun right at home—and learn something in the process. Created by a then fourth-grade entrepreneur (he’s 17 now and still experimenting away), Connor’s Kits for Kids provides allowance-friendly science projects that children will love (enough materials for multiple tries, cool ideas designed by a kid for kids) and about which adults can rest easy (non-hazardous materials, independently lab-tested…and a house safe from ransacking). Just try resisting this Polymer Power kit. (Ages 8 and up; $17.95; kitsforkids.com)
Secrets of Our World
For older children or parents who want to learn in an engaging way with their kids, Richard Dawkins’s latest, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True ($29.99; amazon.com) offers more than a glimpse into how the world works. Delving into how primitive people explained all sorts of questions—the Vikings believing that a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to the earth, for instance—with vivid illustrations and stories, the real beauty of this book lies in the scientific explanations of these phenomena. This one’s a keeper on the family bookshelf that will challenge and interest every member of your family for years to come.
