National Geographic Break Open 2 Geodes Science Kit

I’m rating this 3 stars because the photo is very misleading. If you ask my children, they’d rate it 5 because they loved watching the crystals grow. The crystals you grow out of this set do glow in the dark indeed. If you e ever done crystal growing before, you know the shape will be super cool but it won’t look like the stock photo. Go in with an open mind and no expectations. The crystals will turn out colorless transparent, not green. They’ll glow like those glow in the dark star stickers you can buy to stick on the ceiling. Definitely keep a large tray under the jars because tiny layers of crystals will grow out of the jar and onto the surface, basically wherever you may have touched even slightly while mixing the powder with water. It easily washes off from a stone countertop but I wouldn’t risk it. We used a large, plastic Ikea tray. The set comes with two real crystals which do not glow in the dark. They’re still cool though. I’m taking the average of my rating of 3 and my kids’ rating of 5 and rating this 4. Just lower your expectations and follow the instructions very carefully. Leave the jars in a place nobody will touch them. Longer you leave them, larger the crystals be. At least 2 weeks in our experience. Don’t cave and take them out earlier. You can still observe the growth if the jars are transparent. Be patient and enjoy!

Worked very well

After my child waited patiently and followed the instructions, it didn't work. Definitely not worth its value and disappointed.

No crystals inside!

waste of money

Bought this for my friend’s son who is a young rock lovers. He loves it! Yet, it actually very hard to break and require support from adult to open it. Buy it if you know his / her parents won’t mind to help the little explorer. It’s a good experience. I think this box sets is in good portions. I know there is another box set that has more stones but charge just a little bit more. Very tempting, isn’t it? But after reading the reviews, the version with more stones brings higher expectations. So when the little explorer finds all the stones are actually similar, they become disappointed. And the helpers get disappointed as well (according to my friend, it requires quite some efforts to open each stone). So 4pcs version is a good experience. 10 pcs will be too much.

Well, this was one of the most disappointing National Geographic branded purchase for us.Two "geodes" in the box were not geodes at all. One a least had some colour differences inside but solid without any hollow part inside. Second 'geode' was just a solid lump of quartz.Extremely disappointing and misleading. Obviously not suitable for children because we ended up breaking it with a sledgehammer in the garden just to see what's inside in the end. Nowhere near as interesting as we hoped and I would not recommend you buying it.

I have mixed feelings about this set. On the one hand my daughter loved it (it was her first experience with geodes) but on the other hand we felt slightly disappointed that 3 out of 4 of our geodes were all the same (quartz), and the fourth appeared to be a dud (just looked like rock inside). We tried to chisel them open for a nice clean break down the middle but unfortunately they were far too hard so we took them out in to the garden and broke them open with a hammer. The booklet is a nice touch and my daughter enjoyed identifying which one she had and reading the information about each. She also enjoyed using the little magnifying glass to get a close up look (they do look rather impressive). We will definitely be cracking open more geodes in future but maybe not with this set, although it was an interesting insight for beginners.

Our 8 year old budding geologist was thrilled with this birthday present! I had read reviews & some people said there wasn’t much inside, I had prepared my child for this & explained since they are rocks they can’t guarantee what it will be like inside but he really enjoyed cracking them open. Please note its not a quick process & he worked on them over three days & had a bit of adult help as well. He was so excited to see the insides & I don’t know if we got lucky but the geodes are amazing! We also got the hammer & chisel recommend by amazon with this kit. We would highly recommend!

These are great. My 6 y/o boy was really pleased, he's obsessed with stones and rocks. I wasn't sure how good they'd be, but we got 3 good rocks out of 4. Looking at the guide that comes with it we got 3 different types too.We used a chissel and hammer as suggested and that seemed to work fine. The more hollow ones crack open really easily, only light taps needed, one of the smaller more solid rocks took a bit off beating, so I did that one.A great set and worth the money.