Snap Circuits Beginner Electronics Discovery Kit

Product Information

One potential limitation, as we mentioned above, is the uniquely-designed snap-together components that Snap Circuits uses. This means that if you or your child have a unique idea to explore, unlike traditional electronics kits for kids you can’t just pop into an electronics store and buy some wire and some sensors to use with the kit. Snap Circuit kits also include a plastic pegboard-like base that you can set the pieces on for stability. The company itself has even put out a special kit called the Home Learning Electronic Fun kit that is designed to help at-home learners and contains lesson plans, quizzes, parent answer guides and an assortment of educational activities. So kids who have some difficulties reading may need a little help in this regard from their parents. How Snap Circuits work

In particular, we also feel they are an excellent option for helping kinesthetic learners explore STEM topics in a safe way as kids can really get involved in handling, exploring and testing their electronic engineering skills without much danger or risk of breaking anything. They can also use the adapter pieces to go beyond the scope of the kit itself, using more complex Snap Circuit components like an Arduino set, to create some really fantastic Lego builds. Snap Circuits Discover Coding– Design cool electronics and learn to code them

Create amazing projects

As such, it’s probably not a great place for a beginner but if your child is getting into robotics, wants to create more sophisticated projects, or has some experience with Arduino, it’s definitely worth a look. Price In fact, because they are so popular, Snap Circuits are actually pretty widely used in schools and even colleges as part of lesson plans for teaching electronics. As such, there are tons of lesson plan ideas out there for parents to use or be inspired by. Who are Snap Circuits for? Starting around the age of 8, kids begin applying logic and reasoning to concrete situations, they can conserve area and mass, understand basic object transformations and begin to show the ability to sit and concentrate for longer periods of time – all things that will be needed to manipulate and think about objects working together on a circuit board. With experience this can help them learn to start reading and understanding schematics. especially as their finished circuit will end up looking like a schematic diagram itself. Snap Circuits has been praised for exposing young children to elementary engineering concepts. [1] [4] [5] A related line entitled Snap Circuits Jr. is geared towards younger children. [6] The different sets are all compatible with each other so you can combine sets and the company sells "upgrade" sets as well. [7]

Kids can easily attach the Arduino to various Snap Circuit components (even parts from other kits) and actually program it to do pretty much anything, such as creating a programmable robot car. The company has even started recently bridging the gap between electronics and robotics and computing, offering codable Bluetooth enabled kits and specialized Arduino kits that use the same easy, snap together functionality of their kits and are compatible with other snap circuits components. Add-on components, however, can cost a little bit more than standard components due to their specialized construction and safety features. With the BRIC kits, kids can start off by building something cool with Lego and then really easily add things like lights, motors, sensors to bring it to life.

Our innovative product line offers a wide range of kits, in differing size and complexity, perfect for future engineers ages 8+, with a beginner set designed for kids ages 5+.

The Snapcino kit gives kids a super easy and accessible introduction to Arduino and can greatly expand their opportunities for creating electronic devices. Instruction manuals, while educational, do contain a fair amount of text and are reading heavy. Struggling readers may need more parental assistance. We also like that Snap Circuits actually prints the schematic symbol and label to each component pretty prominently, which lets kids learn the proper name and symbol for each component.

Snap Circuits allows kids to build their own circuits and electronics projects using a pretty innovative snap-together design. We believe Snap Circuits are a good idea as a first electronics kit for kids who are really into electronics and are looking for an approachable, solderless way of exploring electronics, without being limited in terms of creativity and function. If you’d like your child to learn a bit of coding with their electronics exploration, the Discover Coding kit will let them do it in a pretty approachable way. Despite being specifically to be safe and usable by kids with snap together and plastic encased parts, Snap Circuit kits are still surprisingly affordable.Parents can guide kids through topics like energy and motion, light, current and resistance in a very hands-on way that makes lessons a more multisensory, and perhaps more fun, experience for kids.

Officially, Snap Circuits is designed for kids ages 8 and up, and overall we think that this is a good starting age for the product. Snap Circuits is a line of electronic kits manufactured by Elenco Electronics and aimed at children eight years and older. [1] The kits come in a variety of sizes, and may include capacitors, diodes, electric motors, lamps, LEDs, radios, electromagnets, speakers, resistors, transformers, transistors and voltmeters. The kits contain a plastic baseboard into which the various components and wires can be snapped to easily create a working circuit. [2] Snap Circuits was first released in 2002. [3] Finally, Snap Circuits are also highly educational, with a good amount of detail and information about electronics and the science behind them, and can be easily integrated into a variety of STEM lesson plans. Bottom Line Essentially, if it involves a circuit and electricity you can probably figure out a way to build it with Snap Circuits. Snap Circuits aren’t all that more expensive than single-purpose electronics kits for kids, but offer far more flexibility in terms of creative potential.The software in this product is not Mac-compatible, but you can find a similar Mac version at http://www.faberacoustical.com/apps/mac/signalscope/. It will not match our manual exactly, but the differences are minor and it should be easy to understand. The software at this link is not related to Elenco Electronics, Inc. in any way; we do not support it or accept any responsibility for it. As they explore and use Snap Circuits, kids will learn the fundamentals of electronics and electricity. In particular, they’ll learn: Snap Circuits can also help kids hone various related cognitive skills that will be important in future STEM learning, such as: Parents can think of Snap Circuits as a kind of electrical engineering version of Lego in that with the right components kids can pretty much build whatever they can dream up without having to solder anything or risk damaging connectors by forcing them into a small breadboard hole, which we think is perfect for younger kids. Overall, we think Snap Circuits offer excellent value for money for parents looking to introduce their kids to electronics.