“This set has everything you need to keep your child interested in elementary circuitry for several hours at a time. A book containing complete instructions for 101 different projects is included. I bought this when it was on sale, but it’s definitely worth full price.”
“I have a 10 yo girl and a 9 yo boy. I am an engineer myself. There are instructions for about 100 circuits. It is very fascinating to see my kids quickly assemble them one after the other. While my kids sure don't understand all the concepts (clearly very advanced) they get the general idea. I am impressed how the designers put such advanced concepts in a simple way that is fun to do for the kids.”
“My 7yo so loves this!! He gets distracted and bored easily, and we keep coming back to this. We do one or two projects at a time. I’ve also given this as a gift to two of his friends. It’s easy to wrap and I’ve gotten feedback from parents that even the parents loved doing this with their child.”
“This is one of the best toys ever. I bought it for my 4-year-old son because he loves playing with cables and batteries and related stuff. It is not for a 4-year-old but he loves it and he is learning from what I do and following instructions. Very valuable toy.”
“First, yes I know this set says it's for ages 8-108. However, my 4-year old is OBSESSED with electronics and kept trying to play with my arduino stuff. This seemed like a safer option, so I purchased it for them and will be reviewing this from that perspective, should you have a similarly ambitious preschooler that is no longer satisfied with Code-a-pillar.Pros:* Physical form - this is perfect for little hands. Check out my photo of the resistor, with a regular size coffee mug for scale. The snaps can be a little sticky which sometimes presents a challenge but not a biggie. My kid definitely needed my help getting pieces apart sometimes, but putting pieces on was pretty easy for them.* Quick-win projects - being able to light up a light or make a fan go with relatively low effort was a big plus.* Modular - love that we can get more of these kits and combine them. There's also a pretty active community creating new projects, so google snap circuit builds if you run out of projects and want to see some more cool stuff you can do.Cons:* Why are so many of these projects war and bombing and battle? This was honestly the biggest turn-off of this kit for me. Like can we just not? Can we just build some cool stuff?* Instructions are definitely for bigger kids. See my photos - this is not a fault of the product. They're clear, and good illustrations, but my kid isn't yet advanced enough to really understand the differences between all the numbers in the image - so they didn't really get that there's an order of operations. With me helping they got it, but particularly for the more complex projects, I basically had to build it -- which I had expected, but hopefully the images here will give you an idea of what you are dealing with so you can decide if you're up for it.* Mostly loud sounds and lights. This was my own fault for not looking more closely at what was in this set, so this might be a *pro* for you. For my loud-noise-hating kid, this was a bit of a con as they really wanted more projects involving motion.* A lot of projects with subtle differences - I hesitate to call this a con because I think it's super cool that they show things like say, what an AND entails vs an OR, but the distinctions are too subtle for my kid to care. That said when kiddo gets a little older I suspect this set will get some new life as they begin to realize what these other projects are teaching.All in all I still give this 5 stars because it's a great product for getting kids into electronics and we'll definitely get a lot of life out of this. And, let's be real, I am enjoying it too.”
