This is a good kit when you have a group of students. (Otherwise, the price may be prohibitive.) I recommend reading the instructions carefully before determining what you'll do with the kids. The previous reviewer makes some great points.

I agree with the previous positive reviews of this kit. My following comments will be more negative, but they are MINOR; I'm mentioning them because they were not mentioned in the previous reviews. But my overall assessment of this kit is definitely positive, and, if I were going to do a group demonstration, I would purchase this kit again.
One thing that I would modify is part of the instructions. It would be nice to have more details about how much iodine, for example, to put on each square of blotter paper, or, if certain substances in the blotter paper sqaures should get separate petri dishes of their own. Example: When we used the blotter paper and iodine, the iodine diffused out of the blotter paper and into the nutrient agar, which was expected. However, it diffused so far out that it killed almost everything else on the plate (petri dish). In other words, we couldn't tell how effective some of the other substances in other blotter squares on the same plate were, because the iodine wiped out almost everything. The same was true of the bleach, although less so. This problem could also be avoided by the use of divided petri dishes and putting one blotter square into each section. I ended up doing this when I redid the experiment.
More discussion in the instructions would also help, although I realize that the objective of this kit does not include functioning as a lab manual. For example, rubbing alcohol (70%) did not inhibit growth as much as we expected, but we don't know if that's because it was relatively ineffective as an antimicrobial or (more likely) if because of its high volatility it simply evaporated too quickly and became ineffective over the three days that we allowed the bacteria to grow at room temperature.
The other minor negative comment I have about the kit is the price. For a co-op demonstration, this is affordable, but the price could put it out of the range of many homeschoolers who might want to do this lab for only one or two children. This is an great lab kit--educational beyond the "oooh, cool" factor and doable even by non-science-background parents--and I would hate to have homeschoolers not purchase it only because it was too expensive.

This is a very good home science product. My two eleven year old boys were kept busy and interested, learning about agar and petri dishes and the best environment for growing microorganisms. I liked it because the boys were able to independently set up the experiments and evaluate the results.
The bacteria does take several days to grow, so if you are looking for a activity to complete in one day, this is not a good choice. Otherwise, in addition to learning about growing microorganisnms, it indicates where germs are most abundant around the house.

I used this kit for the Science Class I teach at the Co-op. This was a fantastic kit and the students really enjoyed culturing different specimens. We watched the cultures grow for a few weeks and it made firm handwashers out of the students!

This was a very good kit. My initial concern was that there would not be enough agar to fill the dishes. However, after preparing the dishes with a very thin layer (thats all you really need) there was enough to fill some of our own test tubes and do some stabs and still have some left.
This is an excellent intro to general as well as microbiology with or without a microscope though with a microscope a great deal more is possible. In both high school and college microbiology this was the very first project we did, with good reason, and it was the first I did with my homeschool daughters. It is also a very good project with which to introduce children to scientific method as it allows you to not only follow each step in the method but also an opportunity to set up and conduct experiments from start(including preparation of the media)to finish.
There are two suggestions that I will make very strongly. First, without an incubator your cultures will take a long time to grow and if you are unfamiliar with culture prep and care you might be inclined to give up on it too soon.With a bit of creativity we were able to explore various ways to incubate the cultures and compare with non incubated cultures, etc.
Second, be sure to prepare the agar properly or you will get a rough bubbly surface rather than a smooth one.
Forgive my long windedness but microbiology was one of my favorite subjects and this simple kit provides so much for so little cost and time and with some creativity you will never run out of things to do. But also remember that with a project like this you need to use good sanitary practice beyond universal precautions and common sense and when finished dispose of it properly.
George Fear

it was fun and helped me understand more about bacteria (and now i wash my hands more)