Got a budding meteorologist on your holiday shopping list? Toy Insider’s Chief Toy Officer Laurie Schacht stopped by The Weather Channel to show off some cool weather, climate, and science toys. For more on the items featured in this segment, check out the product notes below, and for the complete rundown of the best toys of the holiday season, be sure to check our complete Toy Insider Holiday Gift Guide.
THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUT WEATHER LAB (THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS CLUB)
- Join Ms. Frizzle and her students as they explore the weather. Young Scientists learn about weather by spinning a pinwheel, making a tornado in a bottle, recreating the water cycle, constructing a barometer, and more
- The bus-shaped weather station includes a thermometer, rain gauge, wind meter, wind vane, compass, and 28 experiment cards.
- Kids can also track the weather on the enclosed weather chart with stickers.
- Age: 5+
- MSRP: $39.99
- Available: Amazon
MY FIRST COLORFORMS: MISS WEATHER SET (KAHOOTZ)
- Build colorful themed scenes with Miss Weather, mixing and matching more than the Colorforms pieces and re-sticking the shapes to imagine your own stories over and over again!
- Give Miss Weather different outfits for all sorts of weather!
- Large stickers and bright colors are made for small hands
- Each Picture Panel also features magnetic edges that connect together to expand and connect your Colorform worlds… panels even stick to the refrigerator to display your creations!
- The sturdy storage box doubles as a 3D play tray.
- Age: 3+
- MSRP: $9.99
- Available: Amazon, Target
PLUI RAIN CLOUD AND PLUII II BLUE (MOLUK)
- Pluï is a bath toy that playfully teaches children some basic physical principles.
- Immerse it in water to fill up and then let it rain.The magic lies in the way you can stop the rain simply by closing the hole on top with a finger.
- Pluï gently introduces babies and toddlers to water while stimulating their imagination and senses.
- Easily comes apart for cleaning and drying.
- Age: 2+
- MSRP: $14
- Available: Amazon, Walmart
ULTIMATE VORTEX GENERATOR (SMARTLAB TOYS)
- A tornado in a beaker – 20 kitchen chemistry whirling, swirling science experiments.
- A Vortex mixer for conducting experiments elevates kitchen chemistry toys to the next level and teaches additional science concepts that allow for combining, mixing, blending, and siphoning.
- This standalone toy integrates with SmartLab’s best-selling Ultimate Secret Formula Lab toy, allowing consumers to add onto their existing USFL or start their lab with the Magnetic Vortex Mixer.
- Age: 8+
- MSRP: $24.99
- Available: Amazon, Barnes and Noble
CLIMATE AND WEATHER EXPERIMENT KIT (THAMES & KOSMOS)
- How’s the weather looking today? You decide!
- Kids can investigate specific weather phenomena along with the entire climate system with the Climate & Weather experiment kit.
- Kids build their own model Earth and its atmosphere and use it to experiment to show how the global wind system works.
- Trace air currents, model the planet’s heat reservoirs, thermals, and global and local winds, recreate ocean currents and more.
- Kids will become meteorologists as they build a simple barometer, set up a rain gauge, and track the temperature.
- The entire kit comes with 2 transparent half-spheres, 1 die-cut cardboard sheet, 1 globe sticker sheet, 1 cork stopper, 5 pins, 3 wooden sticks, 5 incense cones, 1 balloon, 1 black disk, 1 black equator strip, tubing, 1 thermometer with a case, 1 petri dish, 1 sponge, 3 tea light containers, 4 paper clips, 1 pipette, 50 g of clay, 2 rubber bands, 1 drinking straw, an illustrated 48-page manual, and a polystyrene foam tray holding 1 sphere with indentations, 2 hemispheres, and 1 ramp.
- Age: 10+
- MSRP: $34.95
- Available: Amazon, Kohl’s
- Experience a fun light display with the touch of your fingers or sound!
- The Discovery Plasma Globe responds to touch, music and sound, providing hours of excitement.
- Perfect for any young scientist!
- Kit Includes one Plasma Light and one Sticker Sheet
- Age: 14+
- MSRP: $24.99
- Available: Michaels, Walmart
CRA-Z-SNOW (CRA-Z-ART)
- Just add water to the Cra-Z-Snow to create a powder that looks and feels like real snow!
- One tub makes over 1.5 gallons of snow
- Also can be used in slime making!
- Age: 4+
- MSRP: $9.99
- Available: Walmart, Target
