9 STEM TOYS THAT MAKE SCIENCE FUN

“STEM” refers to educational curriculum in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and is gaining popularity for being in the spotlight as educators attempt to increase the amount of exposure and education available to kids in these areas.

While these moves are happening in the educational realm, there are a number of cool play options oriented towards increasing interest in these areas. It’s great to see STEM toys for both girls and boys being offered in so many interesting ways which make learning fun and educational. Check out these 9 innovative toys to get your kids excited about STEM.

GoldieBlox Targeted to get young girls interested in engineering-oriented problem solving, GoldieBlox and the the Spinning Machine builds problem-solving skills and engineering principles with 16 different design ideas and free play option to build endless designs.

A Hundred Tiny Hands A Hundred Tiny Hands has a mission to help children become little inventors while teaching them science principles through one of their three kits. The kits cover different scientific concepts: optics and magnification, water and hydrotension, and circuits and electricity. Furthermore, if your child has an idea for a kit, they have a program to help turn it into a product.

MaKey MaKey Proclaimed as the “invention kit for everyone”, MaKey MaKey allows you to take their kit with the namesake device and invents ways to give a computer keystroke and mouse button commands by hooking up alligator clips from the MaKey MaKey to just about anything.

Thames & Cosmos This innovative toy company offers a huge array of science kits. Product lines range from the “Spark” line, which are 12 different quick kits such as “mini volcano” or “dinosaur skeleton dig”, to Geek & Co. Science which are more involved hands-on crafts exploring science concepts.

ATOMS ATOMS is a building system designed to add interactive features to their creations, offering a new dimension for creative play. ATOMS blocks themselves are color-coded blocks in four types: sensing blocks, power blocks, logic blocks, and action blocks. For example, sensing blocks can determine that the block is in motion, while action blocks can rumble and vibrate. By combining these blocks in different ways, you can create a cool interactive construction kit.

Toysmith Learning Kits Toysmith makes inventive, science-inspired project kits that focus on upcycling things around the house to make interesting new creations. For example, the Tin Can Robot allows your child to create a robot that uses a tin can as a body. With six different kits, there are good number of options for these fun science projects to be part of your child’s play.

Play-i Programming Robots Bo and Yana are two robots who are playmates to your children and lead them along a parth starting as early as 5 yrs old to teach basic principles of programming. Three different tiers have been created for three age ranges: 5-8, 8-12, and 12+ years old, where the younger ages learn concepts and principles and the older ranges begin to write some of their own code!

Beyond 123 PlayableART Sticks PlayableART Stick is a system of creative toys in the vein of building blocks, except that each piece has connectors on both ends to hook up with other pieces. The set comes with different shaped pieces including balls, straight rods, and angled pieces to create anything your child imagines.

Ogobild Construction Kits These cool construction sets are made up of ball-based shapes that allow children to attach over 90 different attachments to them for a wide variety of imaginative play and exploration. Attachments include items such as wheels, scoops, hands, feet, wings, springs and more. Different kits are offered allowing you to get a set that’s the right size and complexity for your child.