Thames & Kosmos Electricity & Magnetism Review

What we can tell you, and what we cannot

We have not built it. No lab, no samples, no test children, and no star rating on this page or in its structured data. Everything below is Thames & Kosmos’s own published information plus arithmetic.

Three things to be precise about. The maker publishes 62 experiments but not a list of what each one is, so beyond the named topics and the three final builds we cannot tell you what experiment 30 is — though unusually for this category, a full manual PDF is published for download, so you can read it before buying. The product was released in 2012 and nothing about that matters except that the physics has not changed; this is the same kit it has always been. And on 2026-10-25 the maker’s site returned HTTP 429 to three spaced requests for the Magnetic Science page, so we did not capture whether that kit publishes NGSS correlations, and this page claims nothing about it either way.

The specification that decides it

Why MS-PS4-3 is the most informative line on the page

Thames & Kosmos publishes four NGSS correlations for this kit, and three of them are the ones you would expect from anything with magnets in it: 3-PS2-3 and 3-PS2-4 Forces and Interactions, and MS-PS2-5 Motion and Stability. The fourth is different. MS-PS4-3 is “Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer” — a communications standard, not a forces one.

Read it against the ending and the kit’s design intent becomes legible. A loudspeaker turns a current into sound. A relay switch lets one circuit control another. A morse telegraph key sends a message down a wire. Those are the three technologies that made long-distance communication possible, and the maker aligned the kit to the standard that covers them because that is genuinely where the 62 experiments are heading.

That matters for a buyer in a practical way. It tells you this is not a kit of disconnected party tricks with a plastic motor at the end — the sequence has a destination, and a child who finishes it has built the guts of a telephone, a computer switch and a telegraph. It is also the single most useful thing to know when deciding between this and a 305-project circuit set, because Snap Circuits publishes no standards list and no end point at all.

This is the only product in this catalog with published NGSS correlations at all, which is worth saying plainly: most toy makers do not publish standards alignment, and a maker that does is making a claim it can be held to.

The grade gap, and when the cheaper kit is the better buy

Now the awkward part of the same list, because it runs both ways. The published correlations are third grade and then middle school. There is nothing at fourth or fifth grade, which is precisely where a lot of households start looking at physics kits.

The sibling kit fills exactly that gap. Thames & Kosmos publishes eight correlations for Motors & Generators: 3-PS2-3 and 3-PS2-4, then 4-PS3-2 and 4-PS3-4 Energy, then K-2-ETS1-1 and K-2-ETS1-2 Engineering Design, then MS-PS2-3 and MS-PS2-5. Kindergarten through middle school, including the fourth-grade energy standards this kit does not claim.

So the honest recommendation splits. If you are buying for a curious eight-to-twelve-year old and want one kit that goes somewhere, the Electricity & Magnetism set is the better object and this page recommends it. If you are a homeschooler working to a fourth-grade energy unit, the published list says Motors & Generators is the kit aligned to it — at a fraction of the price. See STEM toys for homeschool.

Who should skip it

A child who wants to build rather than understand. Sixty-two experiments with a page of explanation each is a reading-adjacent activity. Snap Circuits Classic publishes 305 projects and gets a child assembling in minutes.

Anyone under eight. The published floor is 8+ and the listing adds “Skill Level: Intermediate”, which is the maker telling you this is not the entry point. See buying above the age rating.

Anyone whose child is interested in magnets specifically. Half this kit would go unused. Magnetic Science publishes 33 activities with no batteries, and 4M publishes 10 in the lowest price band.

A household with no clear table. At 16.8 x 11.5 inches with 64 loose components and a large-format manual to keep open, this is not a lap kit or a car kit. See what else a science kit needs.

Where it sits

This kit is the lead pick on physics kits for kids, where it sits against the rest of the shelf including both sibling kits and the mechanics option. The same maker’s chemistry line is reviewed at Chem C500 and CHEM C1000. For the building route instead of the explaining route, see Snap Circuits: every set compared; for where this leads at thirteen, Arduino kits for kids and science kits for teens.