Nice little teaching magnet set for the primary grade classroom has (6) magnets in star, two-bar, horseshoe and ring shapes, all plastic coated in silver and red to mark the poles. Range in size from 1” to 3”, and include a few paper clips and small nails for demo purposes.

Nice rare-earth neodymium disk magnet, 1" dia, about the same as a quarter but over twice as thick at 4mm. Rare-earth magnets are permanent and powerful, and this one has approx 7 lbs pull, and always will. Comes with a galvanized metal keeper approx 2" dia so you don't lose it.

Very popular with elementary school teachers, these hardcover blank books let students create their own storybooks. (Middle-schoolers interviewing and making books for primary grade kids is a popular and civilizing project.) Also great for sketching, journaling or scrapbooking. Pure white blank covers with (14) sheets (28 pages) of 80-lb blank paper inside with a sewn-in binding. You pick the 6” x 8” books or the 8-1/2” x 11” versions.

Lego® goes crazy with this 100+ piece kit with everything you need to build (16) different contraptions (be pretty stupid if they made 16 of the same contraption) for your amusement. In the mix are gears, pulleys, belts and axles, which you could turn into a rocket racer, Lego® launcher, donkey cart or scissor grabber, among other things. Includes a 50-page spiral-bound graphically illustrated instruction booklet. And, yes, adding Lego® pieces of your own just ramps up the fun.

Add a door/drawer pull to any ferrous surface with this 1" dia x 1/4" thick neodymium disc in a polished sleeve with a 3/16" dia hole in a stand-off. Comes with a 1" slip-ring attached, and hangs on for 22 lbs worth. Plenty handy for hanging stuff from other stuff, too.

We're liking this little plated N45 neodymium magnet because it will stand on end and stick out very prettily on the ice box. Measures 1" tall x 1/4" square with a hefty, for its size, 3-1/2 lb pull, 13,800 gauss. (Will also lie down on its side, of course, because everybody does.)

The 5/32” bore in the center of this small plated neodymium magnet just makes it easier to mount. Measures 3/4" dia x 1/4" thick with a pull of approx 7 lbs. Works great with #6 or #8 flat head screws.

Gray is for grown-ups. This duct tape is made for the young at heart. You’ll get (30) feet of 1-7/8” wide duct tape on a 3” core. You pick: aqua, chain-link fence/skyline, yellow, pink cupcake, translucent white or olive drab.

Classroom and Science Fair alert: Now you can order an 8-pack of metals and metal alloys for demonstration purposes. Each pack of 1" dia x 1/32" thick discs includes aluminum, bronze, brass, copper, n/silver (w/nickel), m/steel (mild: low carbon), stainless steel, and zinc. Composition of each is stamped on one side of the discs.

We just learned that. You’d think we’d have known. Now we do. They’re sort of like round dreidels, with a hollowed-out middle around the stem, which causes them to turn themselves upside down while they’re spinning. Great lesson in center-of-mass instruction for physics teachers. Includes an explanatory booklet with activities and discussion topics. You’ll get (3) wooden tops at 7/8”, 1-1/4” and 1-1/2” dia.

Voted most likely to attract by the judges, this magnet has the relative strength of 10 men. A shiny silver 1/2" cube of neodymium magnetism, it packs approx a 15-lb pull. If our boss Pat were that strong he could lift 2,160 lbs! Besides its superpower strength, this beautiful cube also would improve the looks of your fridge or bulletin board to no end.

A 3-pack of notebooks for introverts. These 48-page lined notebooks measure 5-1/2" x 3-1/2" and have grocery store-paper-bag-color cardboard covers, pretty much what you find in your Moleskinny notebooks, but at less than 1/4 the price. Plus no strangers will talk to you on the bus because these are labeled "private thoughts," "don't talk to me," and "people to avoid" on the covers. They've got a pic of a tiny person reading at the bottom of the pages, but so what? From our friends at Archie McPhee.

If you're devoted to explosions, and who isn't, you'll love the new expanded 2nd edition of William Gurstelle's Backyard Ballistics, now 25% longer, with 25% more ka-boomery. Still the go-to reference work for building rockets, cannons (carbide and potato), flingers, fire kites, electromagnetic pipe guns, tennis ball mortars, cleaner-bag balloons, ballistic pendula and petards. You simply can't have more fun with common household materials. The soft-cover, 210pp compendium includes detailed and illustrated instructions, parts lists and sensible ways not to be hoist on your own petard. Be careful out there.

But wooden gearheads only. Making Wooden Gear Clocks is a 64-page book complete with full-size patterns for making (6) operating mechanical clocks plus a gear-machine kinetic sculpture. From Woodworking & Crafts magazine, this is for fairly advanced woodworkers, and calls for having most standard tools plus a drill press, scroll saw, router and in some cases a lathe. The resulting clocks are both intricate and stunning.

"WE DARE YOU!" by Vicki Cobb is a 322-page book for children, filled with over (300) scientific challenges and experiments that can be done with ordinary household stuff. A savvy adult could introduce kids to science by betting them their allowance money on the afore-mentioned challenges, including making square eggs without using a square chicken, writing with potatoes, blowing frozen soap bubbles, and a whole bunch more.

Sounds like a Portuguese percussion album, but it’s just an alnico bar magnet in a mount that lets it rotate freely to demonstrate the three-dimensional magnetic field. Ideal for experiments about forces between magnetic poles, fields around wire and coils, and the properties of fields produced by electric currents. Also handy as part of your ghost-hunting gear.

We’re gonna tell you how it’s gonna be. Faded markings on boxes and everything else are a thing of the past with these Sharpie® Extreme Fade Resistant markers. In dark blue, with a fine-point tip.

Start them out right with this (profusely) hand-illustrated, 96-page book: The Story of Inventions. Includes toasters, toilets, television, computers, cars, chocolate bars, dishwashers, pianos, flying machines, bicycles and blue jeans among many others. Includes a timeline, glossary and index. No age recommendations, but we like it for pretty much anyone.