Kids want to be empowered, not patronized. The intended user for a kit like this would be a 12-16 year old. At that age they are old enough to use real tools. Buy the kid an incubator, glassware, and a pcr machine.
The commodore is a great example because you could actually program things on it. Things not listed in the instruction manual. Kids will learn if you give them the tools to do real biology, not playskool biology.
Could you go into more detail about this? I'd love to know how to build a lab on the cheap. Can you get genetic material for bacterial transformation within a K-12 budget as well?
For a standard bacterial transformation experiment you'll need : An incubator, a pcr machine, taq, primers, pcr master mix, a centrifuge, petri plates, LB broth, agar, ecoli, a gel box. Honestly, half of this you could get as cast-offs from your local university for free. Universities are all about supporting K-12 science, you just have to ask.
Hardware is going to run you about 200-300 bucks. The real expense here is the used PCR machine. The incubator, and the centrifuge can be home-made or repurposed (ie a hand crank centrifuge, and a chicken egg incubator).
The rest of the cost is just reagents. The two big things you need to make yourself are Taq, and ecoli competent cells. Both of these are fun experiments in themselves are can be made for 50-100 bucks (resulting in years worth of reagents).
After that it's just buying primers (10-20 bucks a pop) and refills on reagents like agarose and LB which are cheap.
DIY lab doesn't have to be expensive if you are willing to sacrifice a little bit of time.
Check out the Journal of Visualized Experiments : http://www.jove.com/
For the centrifuge, I'd do 3d-printed rotor on a dremel (https://diybio.org/tag/3d-printing/) I use this already to spin down cells and is... cheap and not very safe.
You didn't mention an autoclave- that's needed to make sure all your buffers and equipment aren't contaminated.
I agree, but you could could get a few basic experiments going for that much. Much much more if you spent 800, like you would on this kit.
>You didn't mention an autoclave
Good point. The only stuff you would really HAVE to autoclave would be media, and you can use an off the shelf pressure cooker for that.