When kids come home from school, all the want to do is play. With these fun STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) toys, your kids won’t even know they’re still learning when playtime begins! Senior Editor Ali Mierzejewski brought some of The Toy Insider’s favorite STEM toys of the year to WOIO Cleveland to demonstrate how much fun learning can be!
Vex Robotics Gear Racers (Hexbug)
- Kids can now experience the fun of building their own speedy robot-inspired cars with VEX Robotics Gear Racers by HEXBUG!
- Multiple gear ratios teach kids about potential energy and its effect on the speed of their racecars!
- This kit teaches kids how machines store kinetic energy and transform it into speed!
- Multiple gears Rubber bands Wheels/snap pieces needed to build two Gear Racers.
- Ages: 8+
- MSRP: $24.99
Little Scholar Tablet (School Zone Publishing)
- Kids 3-7 will have a tough time putting down this tablet that’s packed with uniquely fun lessons, books, videos and songs.
- The only tablet fully preloaded with School Zone’s proven learning curriculum, Little Scholar offers 200 and above apps specially created to enhance skills in math, reading, spelling, geography, science, creativity and critical thinking.
- The Little Scholar Kids Learning Tablet by School Zone With Blue Protective Bumper Features: password protected parent section, textured easy grip protective bumper,
- Kid-friendly music with original song by Brian Vander Ark of the Verve Pipe and the A+ Report Card app for viewing dynamic graphs and reports of children’s activity with each Little Scholar program.
- Ages: 3 to 8
- MSRP: $129.99
Remote Control Machines: Animals (Thames & Kosmos)
- Construct a whole zoo’s worth of remote-controlled animals with mechanical insides covered by colorful plastic “skins.”
- The animals all move using different mechanisms, each one mimicking the movement of the real animal it represents.
- A two-button remote control unit moves the small, lightweight motor forward in reverse, allowing models to move forward or backward.
- Build an elephant that walks, a scorpion that crawls along, and a cute little penguin that waddles. Construct a rabbit that bounds forward, a crab that scurries sideways, and an orangutan that climbs hand over hand along a string. You can even build a couple of dinosaurs: a Tyrannosaurus rex that walks on two legs and a Pteranodon that “flies” along a cord. Learn about animal locomotion and biomechanics as you build each model. When you are done, use the same 100 building pieces to dream up your own mechanical animal creations! You can even mix up the animal skins in funny ways to make outrageous hybrid animals.
- A full-color, 36-page step-by-step illustrated manual helps kids assemble all of the models and teaches them about the animals they are modeling and the way different animals move.
- Age: 8+
- MSRP: $49.95
