Develop Skills & Have Fun with K’NEX STEM Explorations Sets

Develop Skills & Have Fun with K’NEX STEM Explorations Sets

The best way to play is to do things that are fun but also help you learn new things and develop your skills. This is something the hungry minds of kids want to do and I love finding toys that really help achieve this by inspiring and pushing the imagination of children.

K’NEX is a company founded in 1992 who didn’t intend to become an educational toy company but just wanted to show kids that the only limit to building was the size of their imagination which is lovely. Now, 25 years later, K’NEX prides itself on connecting Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math with imagination. “STEAMagination” can be found in every K’NEX set and helps kids learn as they have lots of fun.

K’NEX has won over 390 awards and recognitions and the product collection includes toys specially designed for every age group and skill level. There are lots of interesting sets!

We have just begun our K’NEX journey and started our collection with two sets from the K’NEX Education STEM Explorations range — Gears and Vehicles.

Each set it this range includes different ways to build models and each includes a fun experiment to bring to life scientific principles which is a wonderful way to learn and explore. This will also teach kids how things work and how they can improve their building techniques and creations. They can be used at home or in classrooms to help explain things. These sets help children expand their knowledge through building, evaluating and improving — all while having fun!

My eldest daughter is nearly 3 and a half years old so she’s quite a bit younger than the intended age group for these sets (which is 8+) but she really enjoyed helping her dad build the sets and loves playing with the finished models and trying out the functionalities.

The K’NEX Education STEM Explorations Gears set lets kids explore geared models. The set includes over 140 parts that let you build three unique geared models — a crank fan, a car window and an egg beater. I love the variety!

There are three inquiry based experiments for each model that helps children learn about gear configurations, gear ratios, rotational speed, mechanical advantage and more.

The K’NEX Education STEM Explorations Vehicles set can create seven different models. The models have different power sources, including push-power, rubber band power, wind power or a spring motor. The spring motor lets kids experiment with energy transfer, velocity and acceleration, and the impact of design on performance.

There are over 130 parts and 5 hands-on, inquiry-based experiments on several of the models which will help children learn about potential and kinetic energy, velocity, acceleration, motion, graphing and more.

In our opinion, K’NEX sets work best when used as instructed. You can build things yourself by just putting together the pieces you like but not all pieces will go together and they’re not all even parts of one another — like a quarter of a long one, half a long one, etc. — so not all combinations are possible when building freely.

The sets are full of ideas and interesting experiments that are stimulating and entertaining. They definitely help children (and adults!) learn how things work and I’m sure they spark a curiosity to learn more about these things. They’re very impressive and I can see them working very well in a classroom environment too. I also like that the instructions aren’t too detailed — you have to think a bit more than with most building sets which is, of course, a brilliant way to train your brain.

Read more and explore the full range of K’NEX here. You can buy the sets from Amazon.co.uk.

We were sent these sets for this review. As always, all my reviews are 100% honest and all thoughts and opinions are my own.