Snap Circuits SC-300
by Elenco Electronics Inc
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List Price: Our Price: $35.00 You Save: $29.99 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $22.99 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Snap Circuits SC-300
Customer Review: A Great Gift for the Right Kid
Summary: 5 Stars
I got this kit for my 10 year old. We had been experimenting with kit electric motors, magnets and radios and everything ended up mixed in a box that he liked to play with, so there was interest in this type of toy.
The parts of this kit snap together on a clear plastic grid. The instruction book is a black and white center stapled pamphlet that can be challenging to decipher for builds that are more complex. My son liked building the simple circuit that included the motor with the fan. Many of the advanced plans are very similar.
The kit seems durable but not indestructable. My kids can be pretty rough on things so they have been using this kit with my supervision.
For most kids under 10, this is not the type of toy that they can play with on their own. I have my son use this toy at the dining room table. We check to make sure that all of the parts get back in their place when we are done.
This is an educational toy. My experience is that early exposure to learning experiences like this can shape interests later on in life.
I would have liked to have seen a description of what the various modules do to the electricity to make the magic happen.
If you have any specific questions please leave a comment and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can.
Customer Review: 4 Year Old Loves It!
Summary: 5 Stars
For my son's 4th birthday I bought him the Snap Circuits SC-300. He loves it! This is a really cool introduction to electricity and circuit boards. There are 300 projects to do and each one seems to build on the one before it. So it's nice and gentle beginning with, make a light turn on and then basically replacing the light with a DC motor that spins a little fan. Then back to back projects demonstrate how parallel and serial design of the circuit can affect a fan+light setup differently. All the pieces are snap-on and feel very durable.
It is absolutely suitable for a 4 year old with some caveats.
* The snapping and releasing is a little tough for my son, but I only have to help him a little.
* The pictures of the projects could have been made clearer. Instead of showing a picture for both the bottom and top layers, it's just one with some small 1/2 annotations on each piece as to which layer it belongs. That's a little confusing for him and has taken some explanation.
* Not a 4 year old specific comment, but I also wish there was more detail in the project descriptions. They explain what the result of the project will be but don't always do a good job of explaining why it's happening (like why the light starts bright and quickly goes dim when run in serial with the dc motor fan).
Big thumbs up!
Customer Review: The best gift ever!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought two of these sets, one for a six-year-old, tho other for a twelve-year-old. The six-year-old liked the toy well enough, but he needed a lot of help in putting some of the projects together. He loved the flying saucer project and set it off several times in a row. The 12-year-old, however, was completely entranced. He opened the box and immediately set about making a doorbell, a radio, a flying saucer, a Morse code program, a trombone, a typewriter, and several other projects--all before the end of his birthday party!. His sisters, one 14 and the other 12, were also entranced and had to be reminded this was their brother's gift. I do not recall ever giving a gift that has been this much of an immediate "hit."
One thing I wondered about: Are the kids really learning about electronics, or are they just following the diagrams? But I think that this approach is similar to the way kids learn a video game or a computer program: They do not read about it and analyze it; they just do it, and learn in the doing. If you ask as they are making a project, "Can you think of an application for that?", the learning will be enhanced.
I recommend this toy highly, and I am thinking of ordering the Snap Circuits 750 as a gift for all three kids for Christmas.
Customer Review: great set, bad manual
Summary: 3 Stars
this is a great set, however experiments are poorly designed, they are there for the quantity, not quality. They offer little educational value. For example the first few experiments involve music blocks with multiple inputs. They are complete black boxes, there is no way to explain to 5 year old (or to any age whatsoever) how the the circuit works. They also generate little excitement in a child, since any $5 toy will sound better than those boxes. What about starting from a simple circuit with battery, a bulb and an adjustable resistor to explaint the very basics of electricity? You can actually dig out basic experiments involving transistors among other meaningsless experiments if you look hard. My 5 year old son just brought another experiment he assembled complaning that it doesn't do anything - involving adjustable resistor and voltmeter. The diagram suggested using adjustable resistor as if it is regular one. Why? Using the adjustable terminal of the resistor made the whole experiment meaningfull in second - now he can move it back and forward ad see how much currents get through the circuit.
The product clearly missing a well designed experiment book.
Also a speaker terminal has not been soldered (I had to break the shell and solder it)
Customer Review: Making building simple electronic circuits fun
Summary: 4 Stars
Our 12 year old son loves to build things, and to learn how things work.
So for his upcoming 13th birthday, I purchased the Snap Circuits SC-300 product to give him an educational toy where he can learn about electricity and electric circuits.
Normally I don't open packages in advance of giving the gift, but since our son is so hands on, I wanted to try out the product myself so that when we sit down together, I know what he's doing.
I tried about a dozen of the 300+ projects finding the directions very easy to follow; and it is fascinating to see (at least on a very elementary level) how electronic circuits are built.
While the projects do include experiments (variations of a project), what I did find lacking was the explanation of why certain parts were done in the order required.
I rated the fun value as a 5 as a number of the projects are not only fun for kids, but I had fun with them as well; but the educational value is lower than what I had hoped, and therefore rated 3 stars.
Thus stated, I still recommend this product as an educational toy with the understanding that some of the education has to come outside of the product itself.