Customer Reviews

Toysmith Crystal Mining

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This toy was really better than I expected. I purchased one for both my 8 and 5 year old. They started out chipping away little pieces of the hard outer plaster . After a while, my daughter got a container of warm water and realized that the water dissolved the plaster just enough to make their hammering/sawing work a bit easier. They were so excited to extract each crystal and looked at them with the magnifying glass and had a wonderful time exploring the differences/colors/textures. This simple toy kept them busy for about an hour 1/2 and they each have the 8 crystals to keep and enjoy. Would recommend highly.

My 10 year old really liked "mining" for these crystals. She did not attempt to get all the crystals out of the block in one setting. She did a little bit of chipping away of the block, whenever she felt like it. I actually found myself chipping away at it a time or two, it was thrapeutic for me:>. Once you see a piece of a crystal it's exciting. I'm going to look for a more challenging one for her this year. I recommend this, but you must have patience.

I had to do the project myself as there's no way that this could be completed by a young child. The instructions read that you use the hammer part of the tool and then when you break the entire block up, use the scrapper to get the crystal out and scrap off the extra dirt. Well, as an adult, the hammer they give is definitely safe for kids because there's no way it's going to break up the block. I had to scrape the entire block until I finally found the crystals.
When you open the package, it does say something along the lines of "just like an archaeologist, you have to have patience and scrape carefully or you will scratch your crystals." Well, you must have patience because it took me some seven hours to get the crystals out. A couple times I gave up and had to put it away and come back to it. The one plus is that once you get one or two of the gems out, the others are often just underneath so it does get easier, but there's no way your item is going to look like the picture where you have mostly sand and just pick the gems out.

Oh, and if you are scraping one side and getting nowhere, turn the block over. Most of our gems were closer to one side.

Kit comes with a little gem storing page, a bag to put the gems in, and a plastic hammer/scraper. Our scraper was completely worn down once I was done.

It was a blast watching them bang away. The only recommendation I have it to do it outside, as the first wack they gave a geode caused it to go flying across the room- needs adult supervision for sure

I bought two of these, one for my daughter and one for my niece. My daughter (aged 5 at the time) had a great time chipping away at the rock to get all of the gems out. True, it did take her quite a while (and she switched off for a bit with her 7-year-old sister), but the only time I had to intervene was to suggest she wet the rock to make chiseling a bit easier. All told, it took a few hours (which, as a parent of four, was *brilliant*!) and resulted in quite a few nice polished stones. She keeps them in the included leather pouch and considers them one of her valued "treasures."

My 4 1/2 year old son and I had fun playing scientist, first digging the crystals out, then using the magnifying glass to see them up close and then learning about them.

He was a plaster mess afterwards as were the surrounding areas. But he loved every min. of it and the clean up wasn't bad.

All of the crystals were in a clump in one corner and the agate, dolomite and clear quartz weren't there. We ended up with 7 amethyst and 1 rose quartz.

Overall fun and educational for both of us and he loved the mess!

My four-year-old son LOVED this Christmas gift. He spent hours with it over the course of a few days. He was delighted each time he found a crystal and would run into the house to show it off to the family and then wash it in the sink. He now has a little pouch full of them which he added to a box of "treasures" that he keeps in his bedroom. I think he's a little young to appreciate the educational aspects of this project. He didn't read the descriptions of the different stones or use the display card to catalogue them. Be forewarned that it is a dusty mess, so put it outside or in the basement. We put it on a workbench in the garage and gave our son safety glasses to keep the dust out of his eyes--That was more for fun than out of necessity. The greatest thing about this toy is that my son was able to decided independently when he felt like working on it and start and stop at his leisure after the initial set-up. At this age, doing things independently is important to kids. My son even walked away from his cousin's Wii to play with this toy instead!

My 7-year old loves this. She is a hands-on learner. We were working together on the toy, just like 5 minutes ago, and then I came upstairs to order more for Christmas gifts because of the much fun she was experiencing with the kit. As I was at my computer and in the process of completing my order via Amazon, my child came running up the stairs, with dust all over her, looking very uncomfortable and blinking profusely; her eyes and the surrounding areas were beet red! She had accidentally blown the debris in her eyes! We did an eye rinse, followed by some eye drops, and then she went to fetch her swimming googles! Smart kid. I replied to her, "Are you going back for more?" Her reply: "Oh, yea!" LOL. Getting dust/debris in the eye from this toy is easy to do, so you should probably have some goggles on hand for your child, or even for you the adult, if you intend on helping out. I do not recall in the instructions that googles are recommended, but they should be. Fabulous toy but dusty! Wear googles!

This is a fun toy to spend with you child with a few considerations:

1. The manufacturer recommends 5+ years for the toy. There's no way 5 year old to probably at least 7 years can handle and should handle it by itself. The plaster is hard which is impossible for an approximately 5-7 year old to dig apart by themselves plus you may have flying plaster pieces. Maybe ok for an 8+ year old w/o an adult.

2. The plaster is hard. The tool given to cut it is a joke unless you want to dig for hours where your young daughter/son will likely never have patience for. I had to get out a chisel and hammer to break apart the plaster in a reasonable time to keep my 6 yr old interested.

3. The block of plaster is smaller than you will expect given the size of the box; the box has a lot of empty space. The plaster block was about 4x3x2 inches. Probably too small for an older kid (will break it apart too fast), but just fine for a younger one where the adult works with them and the crystals can be found in a time span that keeps them excited.

4. Having said all the above, my 6 yr old loved it and price on Amazon is very appropriate for what you are buying. But again, I had to work considerably with her and make certain that pieces of plaster did not fly into her face. This was actually a good thing because we HAD to do it together, and thus we spent very valuable time together.

5. The kit contained 9 crystals total, five different types. So you a get a couple of crystals of the same type (like basic quartz). However, a six year old doesn't seem to care as much; the quantity and finding the crystals was a bit more interesting that the type. The kit also comes with a nice pouch to place the crystals in and a cardboard board with plastic holding caps to display the crystals. My daughter thought the display board was very nice.

6. In summary, knowing what you are buying and approaching it correctly, you can have plenty fun in one afternoon or whenever with your child. My child and I did and it was the first birthday toy she wanted to play with.

This toy was great. My seven year old loved it. He took it to school for show and tell. The class really enjoyed holding all the stones.