![]() For a gift for a 3 – 4 year old, you can never go wrong with a basic Duplo set. It’s the most versatile, high quality, modular building set there is. ![]() (Check out our Building Structures lesson plan.) And, of course, classic wood blocksīut if I had to choose only one building toy, it would be Lego / Duplo hands down. We also use lots of other things to build with – just get creative: plastic Solo cups, plastic shot glasses, straws and pipe cleaners, toilet paper tubes and cardboard, gum drops and toothpicks, raw spaghetti and marshmallows, sugar cubes, cereal boxes, PVC pipes, rolled up newspapers, binder clips and craft sticks and more. We use Tinker Toys when we study levers, we use gears on wheel week, K’nex for Simple Machines, Keva blocks on towers week, translucent blocks and Magna-Tiles when we study light and shadows (note, Playmags are much cheaper than Magna-Tiles, but I haven’t had a chance to compare quality), Lincoln Logs on House week, and Zoob on Skeleton week, and probably others I’m forgetting! I am blessed to have access to many options at my teaching sites and in my home stash. There are so many fabulous building tools to choose from. If you prefer wood toys, check out Hape Marble Runs. There’s tons and tons of plastic pipe style marble runs on Amazon. We use an oil drip pan for this and other magnet play. I have instructions for how to build your own with PVC pipes plus ideas for simpler ways to build DIY marble runs here.įor commercial items, one of my favorite sets is the Tumble Trax. (Watch a video of it here.) You could use it on a refrigerator or other metal surface. These are one of the best possible engineering toys for learning the tinkering mentality, while also learning about gravity and inclined planes. ![]() ![]() I absolutely LOVE marble runs or ball runs, or marble mazes, whatever you want to call them – those things where you line up the tracks in a wide variety of ways and run a ball down them, then adjust the tracks and run it again to get the longest run, fastest run, most dramatic run, or whatever. All have been play-tested in my class by over 200 kids, boys and girls, science-minded and not, age 3, 4, 5, and 6. Since I teach STE(A)M enrichment classes for kids, I often get asked “what are the best science, technology and engineering toys for kids?” Here is my STEM Gift Guide for 2022 with great ideas from marble runs to building toys, pulleys to tools, electronics and robots, sensory play, games, books and experiences. ![]()
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