Amazon has launched a STEM Club Toy subscription box! This monthly subscription delivers "handpicked, high-quality Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math toys" to your door for $19.99/month.
This subscription looks like any other shipment from Amazon, with no exterior branding on the box or special insert.
There are 3 age range options:
- 3-4-year-olds (counting, building, and cause and effect)
- 5-7 year-olds (hands-on experiments and explorations of electricity, earth science, and simple math)
- 8-13-year-olds (more complex projects and experiments based on principals of physics, chemistry, and engineering)
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
This is a review of the 5 to 7-year-old age range Amazon STEM Club, $19.99/month.
About This Educational Subscription Box for Kids
The Subscription Box: Amazon STEM Toy Club
The Cost: $19.99 per month
The Products: Each month you will receive a different, age-appropriate STEM toy.
Ships to: U.S. (free shipping)
May's Toy: Gears! Gears! Gears! Gizmos Building Set
Learning Resources Gears! Gears! Gears! Gizmos Building Set, 83 pieces - Retail Value $39.00
This toy is another new one for us this month. I think it’s really simple, but offers a lot of learning opportunities! It is designed for ages 5 and up, but a younger child could definitely have a lot of fun with this too, which my 3-year-old certainly did! It was a little tricky for her, but she liked attempting to figure it out on her own. An older child would be able to challenge themselves by creating a unique design with all of the parts.
From Amazon:
Gears toys are designed to help strengthen problem solving skills, critical thinking and engineering skills. All Gears sets are great for learning skills in a hands-on way - tactile learners will love these sets.
The directions for this toy weren’t that easy to follow. There weren’t many pictures and it was a little confusing since everything was in blue and white and a few of the smaller connector pieces look similar as it is. While this wasn’t that great if you wanted to make something similar to what is on the box, I appreciated that a lack of instructions allowed us to just dig in and get started creating without too many guidelines to follow.
There were a good amount of the smaller pieces and you can see that several are shaped similarly which is why it was difficult to distinguish between them on the instructions sheet.
The first step in creating our gears was to build a base using these interlocking green pieces of various sizes. They slid together fairly easily and attached from all sides, which meant we could really build out or make a fun shape for our base.
The next step was incredibly easy, we just slid the round gears on top by lining up the center peg to the hole in the gear. We started by matching similar sizes, but they recommend trying to see if you can get it to work using different sizes as a challenge. Once we had our gears in place, we were able to move all of them at once by moving just one gear.
We added a few gears on top and attached the included handle to the center of one of the gears and used it to set the whole thing in motion. They stayed on pretty well, but a few times when my daughter was spinning them they would fly off a bit, but again, she’s 3!
For some fun flair, they included these spring connectors. They are pretty wobbly and the gears easily weighed them down when we used these vertically so they were fun to use.
We got experimental and started adding gears on top of gears and connectors on top of connectors to try and build our gears upward. We need a little more practice trying to build it up, but using the spring connectors on top helped add some height.
Overall, we had a lot of fun playing with this and I know we can enjoy this each time we use it because we will always be able to create something new together. I felt like it was challenging for me as an adult and I’m looking forward to experimenting with it more! Yet, it wasn’t so challenging that a kid would give up on it because it only takes a little bit of effort to make something that works and moves.
They also included these fun stickers that we can add to some of our gears. Although a few of them block the center hole, so we didn’t want to put them on just yet since we just started our gear designing. Once we learn how to go up and make a more exciting gizmo, we’ll add them to the ends of the tops to make it even more fun!
Verdict: This was another great toy from Amazon’s STEM Toy Club! I felt this set was really heavy on the Engineering aspect of stem and allowed for a lot of creativity since there were so many parts and not many instructions. It was incredibly engaging and I love that this toy is something that we can explore in different ways each time we use it. Plus, they offer other sets and parts like this so that we can add to it to keep it new and exciting. This was another fun, educational toy that will appeal to kids of multiple ages. The toy originally retails for $39.00, but we only paid $19.99 which is a great value!
To Wrap Up:
Value Breakdown: The cost of the subscription was $19.99 and we received a toy valued at $39.00. That’s a savings of $19 on this toy!
If you like this box, you might also like: Tinker Crate (ages 9+), Groovy Lab in a Box (ages 8+), Bitsbox (ages 6-12)
Check out all of our Amazon STEM Toy Club reviews, more educational and STEM subscriptions for kids, and all Amazon subscription boxes in our subscription box directory!
Keep Track of Your Subscriptions: Add this box to your subscription list or wishlist!
What do you think of this month's toy from the Amazon STEM Club Toy subscription box?
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