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Do you have a preschool or grade school aged kid who loves Legos, the cool plastic construction toys from Denmark that have filled children’s rooms since the late 1940s? Lyons Cub has been to Legoland twice already, and he grew up with Lego Duplos and later on had more advanced sets with little bricks, such as the Ninjago Jay’s Thunder Dragon and a dinosaur skeleton.
Maybe, it’s time to get your child interested in physics and mechanics (axles, cams, and cranks working like the pistons of a real engine), and what better way to do this then by introducing Lego science kits? My son got the Klutz Lego Gear Bots Science set for Christmas from his aunty in Carbondale, Illinois. It’s for 8+ years, and he’ll only be 6 next month, but he was very interested in turning the lever and learning why the paper figurines attached to the extension rods were moving in different directions and patterns. With this set, you can build 8 different physics-driven, kinetic creatures using LEGO Technic bricks and papercraft.
I have to say the Lego science kit is very fun, but it is so difficult that I doubt even an 8-year-old could assemble one of the gear bots alone. With mommy’s help, Lyons Cub is going to build different monsters for which there are paper sheets in the package. You have to take them out at the perforation and assemble them (without glue, just stick the ends into the precut slots). Finally, the child places the bots onto the rods above the frame.
There are very few Lego bricks in the package, and you have to assemble each bot at a time, because you only have one frame that changes from bot to bot, so you’ll never have all 8 bots together at the same time. By the way, my son couldn’t assemble the paper bots by himself, either, and they often unfolded when he played a little rough with them. Under parental supervision, this is a cool STEM teaching toy.