Thames and Kosmos Alternative Energy and Environmental Science Power House Green Essentials

I am sure the kits are going to be great but we ordered them through our school with no problem but when I went to order one item from Amazon, I was billed for three more kits! Customer service is somewhere else in the world something where they do celebrate Christmas and could care less about getting my money returned to me.

hello we are students and we bought this project thinking it would come out great but unfortunately we were disapointed . the reason is that the manual book is to vague, the parts don't fit in correctly also satin and it is not durable. we thought that the project was going to be nice especially the solar power pannels the pannels don't even charge and there is nothing to light up. about the manuel the instuctions were not instructions they were more telling and explaining. the paper parts were even confusing.its alot of money we wasted on this project and sorry to say this but we would like our money back!! we are students and we give this a no star rating :) oh from the picture it looks nice but actually its not worth it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!thank you :(

this would have a great benefit if it wasnt made out of syrofoam, maybe make the outside plastic and the inside styrofoam, because my daughter is using this as her senior project on green homes/going green, and she nearly broke it in half just by trying to put it together. not well made if you ask me, but she did learn a lot from the experiments.

My 9 year old daughter used this for a science fair project to demonstrate residential solar energy. The solar panels are surprisingly strong. The manual and materials are easy to use and understand. We supplemented this with a number of resources on the internet to really understand how a solar panel generates electricity.

We purchased this item for our budding scientist. He just started working on the home and he enjoys constructing the house and checking the temperature. I have to check how much he can accomplished so I can provide more feedback. For myself, I wish the house was not constructed by foam since it can easily be chewed on by a little tyke.

Not what is in the picture!! Very, very disappointed, do not buy it, beware!!

Do not expect to open the box and build the house you see on the cover. The good news is they will show you how to put the walls and roof together right away. The house is made of styrofoam. It fits together OK but you could not call it sturdy. Everything else ends up being part of a series of experiments, but you never end up with the house you see on the box because you are always cannibalizing part of what you have built for the next experiment.The box contains about $20 worth of parts (being generous here). The manual is very spotty about how to construct things (some instructions are sufficient but some are quite vague). In many cases you have to hunt to find any sort of details on how to put pieces together. And many of the experiments require materials not in the box. For example, the manual details how to build a working solar oven but as far as I can tell you have to build it completely from materials you scrounge around the house (cardboard, aluminum foil, small pieces of wood, etc.). I think it is a great idea but why did I buy an $80 kit to conduct a scavenger hunt for all the materials.I think I understand what the authors had in mind and in many ways it is a grand idea. I think the idea was to give kids the more specialized parts and some guidance but don't spell out every little thing so they have to do some thinking for themselves. And for some kids this appears to work. But in my experience you have to get kids a little bit hooked with something more specific before they will take off. I don't think this succeeds in the way the authors intended. And I understand that the authors expected adults to help kids on some of this but I don't think that is enough to make this work.In many ways this would have been better as a book - parts of the manual are excellent in the way they cover the topic - it just does not work as a kit.I would be very interested hearing from kids about their experience.

I got this for my eleven year old. We do the projects together, but I think to get the most out of it, it is for 13 and up.