BEST SELLERS

Undated, universal calendar has (50) month-long sheets, so it's good almost until your brand new car's paid for. Stick it on the fridge with the strip magnet on the back. Sheets are 8" x 6" with a 5-week x 7-day matrix that you fill in. In two shades of blue with orange highlights.

About the size of a iPad mini at 5” x 7”, but 70 times cheaper and without the need to recharge it every night, this annual planner/datebook is year-agnostic--you add the actual dates. Has (80) pages with (12) month tabs and space up front for personal info. Includes both week- and month-at-a-glance formats. Oversized ring binder, black cover, and two-tone gray pages. Useful, classic, timeless and priced right.

Pair of alnico bar magnets, each 7/16" x 1/4" x 3". Magnetized end to end with the North pole marked, the North end painted red and the South pole painted blue. Come with a pair of keepers and a wood separator bar.

Ready for test-taking, these (24) 5mm classic mechanical pencils from PaperMate® are in assorted colors, all with #2 black lead. Erasers are on top because even the virtuous fail seven times a day. Package says “Longest leads available,” so it must be true.

You can’t beat the original, genuine, authentic, standard, classic, fine-point Sharpie® permanent markers with the pocket-clip cap. But maybe you can! Limited edition, color burst Supersonic Yellow and Power Pink! Packing a powerful punch. Accept no substitutes, unless we say it’s OK. Our each is a pack of two!

If you make cool stuff, people will pass it on to your children’s children’s children and you won’t spend eternity as just an old picture on a lost thumb drive. We suggest: Making Inventive Wooden Toys, a 184-page paperback with plans for (33) toys, many of them ballistic, out of scrap wood and easily found hardware; or Making Poor Man’s Guitars, a 176-page paperback with detailed instructions for building string instruments out of cigar boxes, frying pans, tin cans, mailboxes and washtubs, with a beer-can microphone thrown in.

…when you crank up this 13-1/4" tall, hand-cranked Wimshurst generator. They were the toast of the 19th Century, and remained the hottest thing around, electrostatically speaking, until Bobby Van de Graaf came along. This one works like a top, zapping sparks to a fare-thee-well with very little cranking. It's mighty pretty too, in acrylic, white and silver, and will dress up a dull physics or electronics lab.

Surprise your parents with a little science at home. “Science Surprises” is a 192-page paperback in its third edition with over 100 experiments that can be done using common household goodies. OK, a couple of things might require a trip to the hardware store, but still.  The science ranges from the Bernoulli principle and Stroop effect to making your own perfume and cold cream. (And remember what Shaw said: “Science never solves a problem without creating ten more,” so that makes a thousand experiments.)

Can you draw? You can with our can. Actually, it’s a pair of cans—or tins, as they’re also known—and they're chock full of art pencils. The large tin, 11” x 7” x a pencil's thickness, has (24) professional-quality 3mm water-color mechanical pencils in more colors than the rainbow. Includes extra leads, a sharpener, and a brush for blending. The smaller tin, 7” x 4” x equally thin, has (5) 3mm mechanical drawing pencils at HB, 2B, 4B, 6B and 8B, plus extra leads and (2) sharpeners. If Van Gogh had found these under the tree, he wouldn't have had to make everything so yellow.

Actually, it's a Round Stic®, without the “k,” which is the name BIC® gives to its #1 selling ballpoint pen. They're black, and round, with black ink and medium points. Also have separate caps with pocket clips. Hard to go wrong at (10) for two bucks. “Writes First Time, Every Time®,” they say.

Ceramic magnets, 15/16" dia x 3/16" thick. One side has a 5/16" sq that goes through to a steel plate is octagonal, 9/16" across with a 3/16" dia hole in the center. The plate allows flexible mounting of the 3/4 lb lift magnet. The other interesting feature is that the ceramic appears to have many poles around the rim, (4 ea N and S). This may be a focussing effect of the insert, though.

So the poster is really brand new. The animals on it are (1) to (190) million years old, and if that doesn't qualify as pre-history, may we stumble over a glyptodon in the dark. Invicta Plastics Ltd. of Leicester, England, printed this 23" x 16-1/2" poster with a colorful diorama to promote their authentic scale models of prehistoric animals. A time line across the bottom lists dates and data for a dozen of them, from the plesiosaur to the woolly mammoth, and compares their sizes to that of a pair of five-year-old children. Post it on the fridge to spark supper discussions, or in the classroom as a source of extra-credit questions for science quizzes.

Kitchen conversions are easy with this 3" x 4" deluxe American Science & Surplus fridge magnet that lists everything from a tablespoon to a cup with the equivalent in ounces, tablespoons, teaspoons, milliliters and fractions of a cup. If your kids already have fridges of their own, you can share the extra magnets with them - unless they were the only kids on the block who knew how many ounces were in a cup. Kitchen Fun.

Dougie here at the home office, who should know, gives this comic-book style science hardcover “Five Big Dougie Stars.” Big Trouble with Simple Machines is the story of Science Ninjas tackling that big trouble armed only with the inclined plane, lever, wedge, screw, wheel, axle and pulleys. In full color at (125) pages, it’s as entertaining as it is educational. Recommended for ninjas ages 8 and up. 

And in black and gold only. This 4” dia, tilting political globe has landmasses in black against gold oceans, and is available at a particularly teacher-friendly price. On a 3” dia base, it stands 5-3/8” tall. Quite complete, with names in small type. Anyone who beholds this beauty will see the world in a whole new way.

An easy way to light up the kids' eyes! Teach them to wire a simple circuit with our basic components.

• The knife switches are mounted on a plastic bases.
• The miniature plastic socket holds a standard flashlight bulb with a 14 mm dia screw base.
• We pack 6 volt and 3 volt round bulbs, or 1.5 volt bell-shaped bulbs, (5) to a package.(Bulbs are rated slightly higher to prevent them from burning out.)
• Hook up the black plastic and metal 2" x 4-1/4" telegraph key with brass contacts and (2) terminal posts with nuts.
• Our blue-plastic holder for (1) "D" battery has a small tab at each end to hook a lead to, and a 1/8" square mounting hole at each corner.
• You add the mounting surface and the know-how.
• Actual bulb voltage listed in parenthesis.

Keep track of things with this (80)-page, 5” x 7” spiral notebook with white pages lined on both sides and stiff orange plastic covers. Front also has a clear plastic zip-lock envelope for whatever you need to carry with your notebook—we don't like to pry.

This is your chance to own a genuine cow magnet. Fed to cows by vets and farmers to attract the odd metallic parts of cows' diets (they tend to scarf up nails, staples and other stuff with the grass) and prevent bovine traumatic reticuloperitonitis, also known as hardware disease. Used for lots of magnetic lab experiments because they're so handy. In plated alnico, 3" long x 1/2" dia in a rounded tubular shape. Approx a 5-lb pull.