Snap Circuits Beginner Electronics Discovery Kit

Product Information

The Snapcino kit gives kids a super easy and accessible introduction to Arduino and can greatly expand their opportunities for creating electronic devices. Essentially, if it involves a circuit and electricity you can probably figure out a way to build it with Snap Circuits.

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. Electrical components provide students ages 8+ with hands-on experience designing and building models of working electrical circuits. Although typically aimed at older kids (12+) these do vastly increase what families can do with Snap Circuits and offer innovative and interesting tech-forward solutions for budding computer engineers. 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.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. 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. Kids can start off learning about basic circuitry and then eventually progress to programming their own Arduino robot or smart plant watering device.

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. Snap Circuits allows kids to build their own circuits and electronics projects using a pretty innovative snap-together design. 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] 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.

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.

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 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. 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.Instruction manuals, while educational, do contain a fair amount of text and are reading heavy. Struggling readers may need more parental assistance. 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