As I mentioned in my review of the Chem C3000, it’s sad that science kits usually can’t compete with more mainstream stuff like Guitar Hero. They also tend to be pricey, but the upside is that online and brick-and-mortar stores will carry chemistry sets, microscopes, etc. and since these things usually don’t sell well for the Christmas season, you can often find them after Christmas at a significantly reduced cost.

As you already know, I posted a review of the Thames&Kosmos Chem C3000 chemistry set here. If you are thinking about getting a telescope, Hank Campbell suggests the Celestron 21036 PowerSeeker 70AZ Telescope in this article, and you can compare it to the Emerson 50X/100X telescope in this article (actually a hack for the telescope rather than a review).

Barnes&Noble has a few Snap Circuits sets on their shelves these days, so you may get lucky and find some of the sets on “red dot” clearance after Christmas (often 50% to 75% off, but be sure to compare their current price to the “red dot” price). They have general electronics kits as well as a couple of theme kits. An example of a theme kit would be Snap Circuits Light. You can take a look at the manual for the kit and decide if you’d like to try some of these experiments. There is also the Snap Circuits Rover. You can review the manual here, and I’ve written an article about it here.

To find the best clearance prices for themed kits that are not on brick-and-mortar store shelves such as Snap Circuits Green (instruction manual) and Snap Circuits Sound (instruction manual), you’ll have to use your Google-fu to find the best clearance prices online but you might not be able to find them at the significantly reduced prices that brick-and-mortar stores mark their products down to clear the unwanted inventory from their shelves.