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Educational toys are very important for children. Lyons Cub received his first junior microscope for Easter, and from his aunty, he got a STEM toy, a winding snake called Slither Bot (approved by the Science Museum). Of course, he also got plenty of chocolate eggs and a bunny, as well as a slime and dinosaur toy from ALDI that is not very educational, just fun.
This STEM toy is for kids aged 8+, but my six-year-old was perfectly capable of building it on his own. It’s not rocket science 😉 I showed my son how to lay out the halves of the 13 joint pieces in pairs, like A1 and B1 together, A2 and B2 together, etc. This order helped him greatly.
The colors on the snake’s tail were alternatingly green and gray. Lyons Cub soon figured out that the A joints went on top (they had a diamond pattern) and the B joints went at the bottom. In between, he tried out the flexibility of the tail.
At first, we couldn’t figure out why the tip of the tail wouldn’t clamp together like the other parts. Oh well, we should have looked in the manual — it says there that two tiny screws hold the tail together! As soon as those had been put in, the two tail tip parts were firmly stuck together.
The robot’s tail is over 50 cm long, and it has an articulated tail. Its eyes make a zigzag movement.
Alas, we had forgotten a crucial piece of the puzzle:
The slither bot needs two AAA batteries! They’re to be put in its head. It has a little black ON/OFF switch on top of its head.
Then, its motor with cascade reduction provides a smooth movement, and the piston rod mechanism makes it move forward. The drive wheels under the snake’s head perform an oscillating movement from the right to the left, so that the robot slithers like a live snake smoothly and sinuously. The children learn to develop manual skills by assembling the snake bot piece by piece, study principles of movement and engineering, and observe the resulting movement.
When he had assembled the snake bot, Lyons Cub tried it out on different surfaces. It doesn’t run on the street, because it always flips on its side. It also doesn’t run well on carpet, and it sometimes gets stuck on tile. We let it run on the kitchen tile, but it needed more room:
The best surface for the slither bot was the laminate in our attic, Lyons Cub’s playroom:
“Mommy, it snakes away!!!” The slither bot only stops when it encounters an obstacle or when the batteries run out. What a fun and educational toy! Thanks, Aunty Dani 🙂