KID K’NEX Review – Budding Builders Tub & Ocean Buddies Set

KID K’NEX Review – Budding Builders Tub & Ocean Buddies Set

You might have heard of K’NEX — the construction toy company where creativity clicks. I recently reviewed some fun K’NEX STEM Explorations sets for older kids but now there’s a brand new range of toys perfect for younger builders aged 3 and above, too.

Like Duplo to Lego, KID K’NEX are chunkier and easier to put together and take apart. KID K’NEX building sets are full of colourful pieces — rods, connectors, blocks and specialist pieces — that are all very easy for little hands to build with.

My girls are 3.5 years old and 14 months old and they love their new KID K’NEX sets. My youngest can’t build with them yet but she plays with the pieces and creations as we build together.

We have two sets — the Budding Builders Tub and the Ocean Buddies Set. The Budding Builders Tub (RRP £34.99) is a large set of 100 pieces including the standard rods, connectors and blocks as well as personality parts, such as eyes, feet and other fun bits. The tub also includes a building idea sheet with 50 model suggestions including bugs, animals and more. The tub makes a great storage box to keep all your KID K’NEX pieces in.

The Ocean Buddies Set (RRP £24.99) includes 65 KID K’NEX pieces with rods, connectors and personality parts. The idea sheet has 20 fun and creative ideas for builds.

Other available sets are:

• Blinkin’ Buddies (RRP £12.99) with 23 pieces including blinking eyes!
• Zoomin’ Rides (RRP £24.99) with 65 pieces including wheels!
• Stretchin’ Friends (RRP £12.99) with 23 pieces to create creatures with stretchy necks and tails.
• Build A Bunch (RRP £24.99) with 66 pieces of different types — great mix!

We’ve mixed our two sets together in the tub and keep both idea sheets there too. My eldest loves looking at the idea sheets and choosing one that she then copies. This is great brain training and I’m quite impressed with her building skills!

We also love free-building and just making up our own creations. Making magic wands is one my 3.5-year-old’s favourite things to build. Below you can see a build of my husband’s — he tried to use as many pieces as possible to make a funny monster!

The whole family loves KID K’NEX! It’s a very creative toy that helps spark little builders’ imaginations. KID K’NEX also helps develop essential skills like fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and dexterity. Building with KID K’NEX is fun, creative and educational.

The only criticism that I have is that I think the images in the instructions should be photos rather than computer illustrations as the aspect ratios are not always correct, meaning the finished build looks slightly different. This is not something young children notice though!

Check out all the sets on the K’NEX website and buy from shops like Amazon.co.uk, Smyths or Argos.

We were sent the two sets shown for this reviews. As always, all my reviews are 100% honest and all thoughts and opinions are my own. The last photo is a press release photo, all other photos are my own.