Build the Rocket contains a fantastic book and a cardboard kitset model of a large rocket which can be stood on the floor of your kids’ bedroom. It’s one in a series of such books – we also have the “Build the Human Body” book and model which my preschool paged children love.
I’m liking
The book has all sorts of fabulous facts about outer space and rockets in it and even if there was no model, it’s one of the nicer books I’ve seen on the topic and well worth purchasing just for – although of course, the last page of the book is a cardboard box, so it takes up a bit more room on the shelf!
Things that made me go hmmmm
I loved the idea of the rocket, but putting it together wasn’t so easy as I’d hoped. Quite a number of the cardboard slots for the tabs to go into weren’t fully punched out and couldn’t easily be pushed out by hand. If you tried to push in the slot, it could get stuck and not go through properly, then the cardboard tab would get wonky and make it harder to get in again. Perhaps the kit we had was unusual and this doesn’t normally happen.
We got there in the end, but it was rather frustrating and because we couldn’t get all the tabs in properly, the rocket easily broke into its various pieces. This actually meant that I was left alone putting together the rocket while the boys went off and played, and they came back every so often to check on my progress! I think that 6 years old might be a little too young to have the careful coordination to get the little tabs into the right places and to follow the instructions for putting it together (my boys are 5 and 3).
Aside from this, the rocket itself was pretty fun, looked great and the boys loved all the various parts of the rocket and how they separate out – was nice to have it put together that way.
The conclusion
I highly recommend the book but I’m not so sure about the rocket kit itself.
