We all know Legos are great, but we thought we would give some alternatives this year to bring STEM and engineering into your home! Check out our top 5 list below that are associated with an engineering discipline!
Product: Snap Circuits
Related Engineering Discipline: Electrical Engineering
Age Range: 8+
Description: Snap Circuits have been around for a few years now, but we love this option for learning and understanding the wild work of electrical engineering! It safely (no soldering needed!) exposes young students to parallel and series, switches, circuits, etc. to make learning about electrical engineering fun. If I had had this as a way to learn circuits in college, I may have gone into electrical engineering! We linked below to a beginner kit and more advanced kit, but either way, this is a super affordable way to get kids thinking circuits!
Product: Kano Harry Potter Coding Kit – Build a Wand. Learn To Code. Make Magic.
Related Engineering Discipline: Computer Engineering
Age Range: 6+
Description: Considering the fact that we are a bunch of crazy Harry Potter nerds, this is a great balance between an interest and a great coding toy! Kano has some amazing products related to computer engineering and exposing kids to coding, but we are definitely partial to this one due to the story it is related to. This product allows kids to build a wand and code out different actions of the wand. You will need a tablet to utilize the app, but we are big fans of this amazing new take on coding fun!
Product: SmartLab Toys Ultimate Secret Formula Lab
Related Engineering Discipline: Electrical Engineering
Age Range: 8+
Description: Kit science isn’t usually our favorite, but we love this toy because of how true it stays to an actual chemistry lab. Pipettes, petri dish, calcium hydroxide…sounds like a chemistry lab that all engineers spend some time in! We also love this product because you can do a ton of different experiments. It is not a one and done type investment which is great for any budding engineer!
Product: Fort Boards
Related Engineering Discipline: Civil Engineering
Age Range: 5+
Description: All kids love to build forts; building a place they they can actually crawl into is a pretty exciting thing. So, fort boards is our number 1 choice to introduce civil engineering in a fun way. What we love about this toy is how open ended it is. There is a lot you can do with these boards and a fort is just the beginning! We believe this is the perfect combination of an introduce to construction while also giving kids room for creativity and play.
Product: Growin'GEERS
Related Engineering Discipline: Industrial Engineering
Pricing: $30/month
Age Range: 5+
Description: Okay, so to be totally honest, we looked long and far for a great toy or game that encompassed what it is like to be an industrial engineer, and we couldn’t find it. Seriously, isn’t that nuts? Especially since industrial engineering is quickly growing and because the skills you use as an industrial engineer are useful in other engineering fields (just as all the civil, chemical, and electrical engineers with their masters degree in Industrial Engineering). Anyway, we didn’t feel right leaving this discipline out, so check out Growin’GEERS for an at home option to learn about optimization and Dijkstra's algorithm. We provide the animated videos, research and brainstorming worksheets, and a planned hands-on activity that can be done using household materials (materials not provided with online membership).
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