Engino Discovering Stem: Levers, Linkages & Structures Building Kit
Oftentimes, the most memorable scientific concepts are the ones that are most practical and applied in our everyday lives. All around us are fruits of engineering, from the houses we live in to the cars that take us from place to place. Young minds often pick up concepts quickly, especially when they are taught sneakily, through fun ways. And for many, few things are as fun and engaging as building sets, like Legos for example. Engino puts a twist on the building set by including pieces teaching you how to build, using simple and complex assemblies, moving sets that use leverage and and torque to make creations that can move objects. The Engino building help teach some of the underlying principles of mechanics as well.
Through playing with kits like this, children are internalizing how forces can be used to move things, concepts that play big roles when learning classical physics. It is a great way to develop a child’s creativity, while also priming them for bigger thinking later on in life.
This kit comes with building parts, and also a booklet with instructions and also plenty of information on engineering concepts and related info. There’s even a quiz included to test your knowledge. A great companion piece to an already impressive set.
d ages. Of course, some of those sets are pretty expensive, and the truly best part about Legos is the ability to make your own creations with the parts available to you, where your imagination is the limit. If you ever feel you or your kids hitting a wall with your Lego building, check out this Chain Reactions kit from Klutz. Taking inspiration from the creative, yet complex, creations of Rube Goldberg, expand your imagination with some clever engineering to generate machine sequences of your own with Legos! String together some of the ‘reactions’ in this kit to create sequences that will wow your friends and family. This kit comes with instructions for several examples, paper ramps, string, lego pieces, and anything else you’ll need to create creations to spur the imagination. Recommended for ages 8 and up.
! It was relatively cheap and came with 15 possible experiments. The bag does say it is for ages 8 and up but from experience I can say it works best for kids between 5 – 8 years of age. After 8, these simple experiments aren’t going to be as fascinating.
kit. It is in between the two I mentioned above in that, you get 20 experiments similar to the ones you would find in 
!
It plays over 45 songs and given that it is shaped like a tv remote, which admittingly irked me when I first saw it, there are 9 channels to “surf” through. Why did this irk me? I originally felt like it was encouraging kids to learn how to use the tv but, toddlers naturally want to play with adult toys, i.e. remote control, cell phone, or wine glass…
which resembles a flip phone and they loved it! Something about flipping open a phone delighted them. However, this was also when 
was super popular. So if you want a play phone that is a bit more realistic, go for the 
. Kids can add up to 5 family members into their phonebook to “pretend” call. There are also 10 realistic apps which might just trick the smartest of little einsteins into using their own phone and learn numbers and letter.
! I was fascinated with them as a kid! What would have blown my mind more than 
?!?
and 
are options as well!
, both available on 
.
.
Equally as gorgeous is the 
didn’t appeal to me as much as an 
! However, If I had the 
ies such as blank slides and cover slips, along with stains, and more to allowing you to prepare your own samples for viewing under the microscope. Makes a great microscope starter.
