Snap Circuits 3D Illumination Electronics Exploration Kit | Over 150 STEM Projects | Full Color Project Manual | 50 Parts | STEM Educational Toys for Kids 8+

If you're wondering what to buy your child this year that is not another toy or video game, consider Snap Circuits. Elementary schools in my area have introduced them as part of their STEM curriculum and they have been a hit with the students as they are able to create all sorts of projects, including alarms, fans, lamps, AM radio, doorbells, special sound and light effects, etc. I will compare it to Little Bits and Lego Mindstorm below.There are materials and training out there to build more elaborate toys that could potentially get your child a Science Fair prize, but if you're looking for something affordable that doesn't require an advance degree, allows kids to have fun on their own and spend hours tinkering with, you'll soon find that the Snap Circuits 750 sets is the best investment. It is the one my child's school picked in the end for ease of use and because - let's face it - kids love it. A Top 10 Educational Toy award and a 5-star overall review speaks for itself.Don't let the nondescript look and fancy name fool you - this is a high quality, five-star rated toy, voted one of the best of the year. You can buy smaller Snap Circuit sets with the individual manuals, but the price overall will be higher when you buy all five separately. Get the whole set instead - the SC-750 set is a bargain for the hours of fun this will bring your child and your family for years to come. This set includes the 5 easy-to-follow manuals of the smaller sets and all the parts needed to build 750 projects in all, in a sturdy carrying case to hold it all. It's for kids 8-15 but grown-ups love to help as wellThis SC-750 set grows with your child. As a learning tool, the projects are meant to be done in some sequence, with each one explaining a part and what happens if you move this or that - at least in the beginning. We started working on the Jr (100) set which is the pink manual (1-101) when my son was five and he was able to do it with our help. Every step is explained, once you learn one project you move to the next and see what happens to a siren when you add a resistor, for example. The descriptions are kept short and to the point - for example, that the resistor lowers the volume.One reviewer wished each part of each project was explained in detail each time. As one project builds on the knowledge from a previous project, it's impossible to explain what happens with each part in any one project. This would fill the page with tons of text. Rather, it's a gradual learning process and it's assumed that earlier projects have been done.Four years later my son still loves it but is able to do it on his own, and is doing projects from other manuals. He can skip ahead too as the diagrams clearly show how to put all the parts together - though he might miss some explanations about the "why" of using each circuit part in a particular project if he doesn't do them in sequence. Not a big issue at this age where assembly-type toys with lots of parts are the norm.My now nine-year old considers the R-750 set to be - in his words - awesome. Seeing how each varies intrigues him to no end. He's still fascinated with the set, more so now that he's also using them in school.I've also had the opportunity to see other STEM toys in action. A month ago, Barnes and Noble hosted Mini Makers fairs in stores nationwide and one that was featured was Little Bits. It is probably more along the lines of more traditional circuits, where small components are put together to create alarm clocks and moving parts in legos. It is also exorbitantly expensive. Fortunately some libraries are investing thousands of dollars in buying these so you may soon be able to find them free of charge near you. It too ends up creating gizmos and gadgets, but for a lot of $$.Today I covered another STEM event at a library, this time with Lego Mindstorm. A teacher helped students for two hours to build a Lego robot, starting with the base Mindstorm unit, programming it on a computer, setting up parameters for instructions to make the robot spin, turn lights on and off, etc. This class was free but if you decide to buy it on amazon, a Lego Mindstorm Kit is very expensive and only lets you do a handful of projects. Now the big "BUT" kids have a hard time doing these on their own which is why schools are bringing teachers to train them and companies - not schools, at least in my area - are doing after-school classes and summer camps just to learn how to use this Lego Mindstorm. If the teacher leaves, the kids are left with a bunch of technology they don't know how to use because it can be so complex.In all, either as an introduction to circuits or simply as an assembly toy, it's a winner.

After 14 yeas since I bought it us still fun and learning from it. No question, one of the best educational toys out there for ANY age, so even for older adults, young, middle age, etc no home that likes learning and in today’s technological world should be without this! Every young child should have access to one of this!! Well built, high quality, after 14 years still works! Extremely well documented with books so well written that they are worth the money themselves! The experiments as so well designed to really help you understand electronics! Whoever designed this deserves a high educational award and recognition! Buy this full set with case, you will not regret it, worth its price!

I don't write many reviews myself, but rely a lot on Amazon reviews for my purchase decisions. So here comes one of the very few reviews that I will write now or in future...I was looking for some fun summer science projects for my daughter (8) and my son (6). Did plenty of research and asked around others to see if they had any recommendations. One suggestion was to introduce them to the concepts of electricity and electronics - now quest was for "how?" because I didn't want them to be soldering circuits and what not; I consider it to be too risky for young ones. Someone suggested the name "Snap Circuits" and told me that they spent $150 for this SC-750R kit. After a little bit of sticker shock, I was skeptical that I would spend that kind of money for a toy but needed a second opinion, so I went to a local RadioShack. They had one of the smaller kits in stock. The sales person on the floor was nice enough to give me good education and had lot of praises for these kits! I wanted to buy a kit from them even at a slightly higher price, but unfortunately they had only one entry level model available (price was comparable to Amazon), and couldn't tell me estimated cost or availability date for the higher end version. According to the sales guy... they didn't stock these because even when recommended, almost all parents pass this kit in favor of a car or some other junk toy that they end up buying for their kids!Well, after reading reviews and looking at options on Amazon, I couldn't resist but to go for the best kit available thinking that this will be good for next 3 to 5 years as my kids go through the elementary school, so pulled the trigger and purchased this kit, along with Elenco Snap Circuits Battery Eliminator. Kit is made very well, and is very sturdy!Now lets talk about how are my kids loving this kit... well, they each have already built some 8 or 10 projects in last 3 weeks including AM and FM radio. My 6 year old built an AM radio and after spinning the tuner wheel to tune to different radio stations and a little explanation by me of how it worked, he called it channel switcher and told me that he knows how television channels are switched... "it is filtering out some frequencies to tune to a different channel!!!" And yes, these are the exact words that came from a 6 year old after we spent 30 minutes together building an AM radio! My 8 year old builds projects whenever we have guests and shows these projects off to them (most projects are taking her 10 to 15 minutes at most)! I have told my kids that if they build one project per day every day, they have next two years worth of projects on hand!This particular kit came with a Student Handbook among other things that explains concepts but we have not spent a whole lot of time reading it yet. I don't know what else can I expect from a toy or if I can even call this a toy! I am happy that I went for the best kit available - I might have to buy one of smaller kits now so that I have two base boards (plastic boards on which circuits are built) so that both my kids can do projects on their own instead of them having to take turns. That's a good problem to have, isn't it? :-).Finally, at first glance the cost seemed very steep, but then I thought, a one week of summer camp costs $200 to $250 per child so, why not spend $150 on this kit and optimize on the cost of summer camps for one week and decision became very easy!