Skip to main content

The Curiosity Box

 There's been something of a thing in the UK for boxes that you get sent regularly through the post, whether it's food, flowers or beauty products. But a new Kickstarter appeal is raising money to send out much more interesting boxes - boxes of science fun.

The Curiosity Box, described as 'seriously sciency fun for families' is produced by Renée Watson, founder of the Oxford-based science education startup WATS.ON, and her expert team of science communication specialists. It's described as the first monthly subscription service in the UK for 7-11year olds, bringing science to life through hands-on activities and lots of extras to inspire creative and curious minds.

The team is looking for £4,000 to kickstart their idea and achieve their vision of disrupting education and making science happen in every home across the UK and beyond. 

The Curiosity Box has been specially designed to get the whole family involved and to encourage kids to learn about science by developing their creative thinking and problem solving skills.

Renée says: "I want kids like me who don't fit the scientist mould to realise that STEM is absolutely for them too, I believe that the next Ada Lovelace or Emmett Chappelle is just waiting to be found and we want to find them! I am so excited to be launching The Curiosity Box, our future relies on the next generation of innovators and I want to get cracking igniting as many sparks of interest in STEM as possible!"

Pledges range from £5 to £1,000 with the usual range of goodies for those who contribute. The smallest contribution to receive a box (hopefully in August) is £20.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...