Snap Circuits Beginner Electronics Discovery Kit

Product Information

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] That said, Snap Circuits are a popular hobby for kids and you can find pretty much anything you need for it at pretty much any hobby electronics shop, from resistors to motors to music boxes, but to some degree it does sacrifice freedom of modification and expansion for ease of use and safety. What can kids do with Snap Circuits 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. Add-on components, however, can cost a little bit more than standard components due to their specialized construction and safety features. If you’re looking for a way to introduce even younger kids to the world of electronics, Snap Circuits does provide a kit for that.

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. In fact, Snap Circuits produces pretty much every type of component that a child or even hobbyist adult would need, from common pieces like resistors and variable capacitors to more unique parts like fiber optic cables, FM modules, and prismatic films. Despite being specifically to be safe and usable by kids with snap together and plastic encased parts, Snap Circuit kits are still surprisingly affordable. 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.

Its parts are easy to handle and are durable, there are no small parts to get lost or broken and the instructions are typically well illustrated, with large and contain lots of easy to follow diagrams. Electrical components provide students ages 8+ with hands-on experience designing and building models of working electrical circuits. Instruction manuals, while educational, do contain a fair amount of text and are reading heavy. Struggling readers may need more parental assistance. 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 Kids can start off learning about basic circuitry and then eventually progress to programming their own Arduino robot or smart plant watering device.

Makes learning electronics easy and fun!

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?

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] One potential limitation, as we mentioned above, is the uniquely-designed snap-together components that Snap Circuits uses. 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 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.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.

In this way, kids learn the fundamentals of coding (variables, conditionals and more), and can actually see the effect their coding is having in a much more concrete way, without having to worry too much about programming syntax or the particulars of a coding language. Snap Circuits Snapino– build sophisticated robots and electronic devices with the power of Arduino Snap Circuits allows kids to build their own circuits and electronics projects using a pretty innovative snap-together design. Extreme Version - Contains over 80 parts to build over 750 projects. Includes everything from SC-500 plus projects in solar, electromagnetism, vibration switches, and 70 computer interfaced projects. Includes Projects 512-692 and CI-73 manuals. Snap Circuit kits also include a plastic pegboard-like base that you can set the pieces on for stability.Snap Circuits can also help kids hone various related cognitive skills that will be important in future STEM learning, such as: