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.

Essentially, if it involves a circuit and electricity you can probably figure out a way to build it with Snap Circuits. With easy to use components, an intrinsic connection to electricity and electronics, a highly configurable and flexible nature and informative instructions, we feel it’s quite easy for homeschoolers and those looking for enrichment to build lesson plans around 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. As they explore and use Snap Circuits, kids will learn the fundamentals of electronics and electricity. In particular, they’ll learn:

Overall, we think Snap Circuits offer excellent value for money for parents looking to introduce their kids to electronics. 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] 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. 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.

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 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. Officially, Snap Circuits is designed for kids ages 8 and up, and overall we think that this is a good starting age for the product. The Snapcino kit gives kids a super easy and accessible introduction to Arduino and can greatly expand their opportunities for creating electronic devices. 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.

Produced by Elenco Electronics, Snap Circuits is a line of snap-together electronics kits designed to kids 8 and up explore the world of circuits. Despite being specifically to be safe and usable by kids with snap together and plastic encased parts, Snap Circuit kits are still surprisingly affordable.

Snap Circuit kits also usually include an illustrated, full color guide with a wide variety of diagrams and ideas for projects. The projects in the beginner kits are a little simpler and easier to put together than the regular kits and, perhaps more importantly, they use far more pictorial instructions than regular kits, making it better suited for pre-readers and those just starting to read. Snap Circuits Bric – for Lego enthusiasts

Create amazing projects

The company has even started recently bridging the gap between electronics and robotics and computing, offering codable Bluetooth enabled kits and specialized Arduino kits that use the same easy, snap together functionality of their kits and are compatible with other snap circuits components. 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. 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. As such, it’s probably not a great place for a beginner but if your child is getting into robotics, wants to create more sophisticated projects, or has some experience with Arduino, it’s definitely worth a look. Price Add-on components, however, can cost a little bit more than standard components due to their specialized construction and safety features.