Growing Plants with the I’m a Genius Botanical Laboratory

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We have always had an interest in plants and flowers as well as trying to grow our own mushrooms, tomatoes and lettuce. When we have our own house, we definitely would love to have a garden big enough to have a veggie patch so we could start growing as many fruit and vegetables as we can! At the moment we have fake grass so not much chance of anything growing in it however we have been trying out the I’m a Genius Botanical Laboratory set to see what we can grow for ourselves!

We were kindly sent the set by Toys and Bears who sell a great range of kits for children to help boost STEM knowledge through play. I have been looking for various ways to expand our home schooling so it’s not just Teams calls and working from the laptop all day! With these sets, the kids can get creative and spend some time learning practically as well as from the textbooks.

The I’m a Genius Botanical Laboratory is a fully functioning miniature greenhouse kit which comes with everything you need to grow your own plants. It has an innovative watering system and contains all of the things your child will need to set up their own greenhouse.

Ideal for those aged 7-12 (although Lottie loved it too!), the kit contains seeds, mini flowerpots, peat, a tiny watering can and a little trowel. The seeds can be grown all year round so no need to wait for the perfect season. There are full instructions to show you what to do although we found the greenhouse construction tricky!

The green house comes in parts so the first thing you will need to do is help your child put it together. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting quite so many parts to put together and Mia wasn’t able to help with any of it as it was quite tricky! The pieces are really fiddly and the holes you are meant to push the plastic into is really difficult to get into place. If you make a mistake the plastic is so weak that it snaps easily so make sure you have it all in the correct place before securing it together. Once the greenhouse is erected its absolutely fine though!

Once the greenhouse is constructed, it’s really simple and both girls loved filling the flowerpots with peat, sprinkling the seeds over and then putting more peat in the top.

After a quick water, we popped the greenhouse up in Mia’s room where we were expecting not to see anything for at least a week.

We were so surprised when Mia came down the next morning and said her plants had started to grow! By day 4, the plants were really quite big and soon they will need to be moved out of the greenhouse soon and into bigger pots!

I really like the I’m a Genius Botanical Laboratory set, and I think it’s ideal to get kids hands on and experience their first sense of growing something themselves. We were surprised by the initial amount of parental involvement with the construction of the greenhouse (it could definitely be made a lot simpler!). However, we were very impressed with how quickly the plants grew which helps so much when you have impatient children! They have absolutely loved watching them grow each day and this weekend we will be transferring them to bigger pots!