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.
Usually, this subscription looks like any other shipment from Amazon, with no exterior branding on the box or special insert, but this month, everything just arrived in the toy box itself with a shipping label on top.
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)
This is a review of the 5 to 7-year-old age range Amazon STEM Club, $19.99/month.
My Subscription Addiction paid for this box. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)
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)
February’s Toy: Learning Resources Math Adventure Pack
Learning Resources Math Adventure Pack - Retail Value $29.49
This month our toy comes from Learning Resources and includes two games that you can purchase separately. Together they are referred to as the Math Adventure Pack. One game is for ages 5+ and the other is for ages 6+, which fits into the targeted 5-7 age range. I found that both could be fairly easily adapted for younger kids though!
Learning Resources I Sea 10! Math Game- Retail Value $9.99
The first game we received is this I Sea 10! game. This 2-4 player game is for ages 6+ (I'll show you how I adapted it for my 2 and 4-year-old) and all of the pieces fit neatly inside this box for easy storage. This game is designed to meet CCSS Operations and Algebraic Thinking and I thought it was a fun game that could easily be used for math centers in a school setting or for extra math practice at home.
The box contained a small instruction booklet that told us how to play. It is a similar concept to the 24 card game, but this version is simplified to make a sum of 10 using the cards.
There are 100 little circle cards with various colorful sea creatures on one side and numbers on the other. You start by placing them all with the number side down and then take turns flipping the cards over one at a time and seeing if you can "catch" a combination of 10 by adding the numbers together.
You have to make combinations with two or more cards and call out "I Sea 10" if you are able to make ten with the cards that have been flipped. The first person to call it gets to keep the set of cards and the one with the most cards at the end wins. The game ends when all cards have been flipped and none of the remaining cards can make a combination of 10.
If you flip over a shark card you have to return the card and any other cards that you have to the pile! If you are playing with a younger player, they recommend just having them return one of their 10 combinations to the pile instead.
My son is only two, but he wanted to play so badly, so I had him simply make pairs of the matching sea creatures. There are a few different colors of each creature, so it was a little challenging since there are 100 cards in total!
For my daughter, I had her identify the numbers and sort the cards by number. We could have done some light addition, but at 4, she still needs some manipulatives to help her add, so she isn't quite ready to compete yet! While I chose to simplify it, you could easily make it more challenging by playing I Sea 20! like the instructions suggested or by making up your own game using the pieces.
Learning Resources Sum Swamp Game - Retail Value $19.99 (found here for $15.19)
The second game we received is called Sum Swamp and it is a 2-4 player addition and subtraction game for ages 5+.
This is more of a traditional board game style game.
It came with these cute little soft plastic playing pieces which my kiddos absolutely loved!
The game also came with two green numbered dice and one white with pluses or minuses on them to indicate whether we should use addition or subtraction.
The game itself is fairly simple. You put your game piece on start and then roll the dice to create a number sentence by placing the highest number first. For example, if you roll a 5, a 6, and then a - sign then your number sentence would be 6 - 5 = (1) which means you would move 1 space. If your number sentence equals 0 then you don't move at all. The first person to reach the Finish spot is the winner.
There are also several special places on the board such as a few shortcuts and spaces with numbers. If you land on one of these numbers, you then roll the operations die and if you roll a + you move forward that number of spaces, but if you roll a minus, you have to move back. If you land on a space marked "evens" or "odds" then you have to roll one number die. If you roll and match your space, for example, you are on "evens" and roll an even number, you may move ahead that many spaces. If you don't match, then you have to wait until your next turn to move.
If you land on the "endless loop" section then all of the players have to enter the loop and they continue the game moving clockwise and once you land on the space marked "exit" you can exit the loop on your next turn.
The game really is pretty simple and I could play it with my four-year-old, but at a much slower pace than you might with an older child. We stuck with addition only and I just had to help her solve the problem before we could move our pieces.
This was a great game to practice our math skills and it is one of those games where it would be easy for a younger child to forget that they are actually learning and practicing math in the process. The game was simple but had enough extra things like the endless loop and evens spots to make it a little more exciting.
Verdict: It has been a while since we received a math-specific toy from Amazon’s STEM Toy Club and I thought that this set was pretty good. The games appeal to kids and can easily be tailored to your child's needs to reinforce those skills in an engaging way. Plus, they all pack up nicely in their own boxes, which is great for storage and organization! I think that older kids would be able to play these together and have some fun with friendly competition, especially with the I Sea 10! game. This toy retails for $29.49 and we only paid $19.99, including free shipping, so I think that's a good deal for some solid math games that are educational and fun!
To Wrap Up:
Value Breakdown: The cost of the subscription was $19.99 and we received a toy valued at $29.49. That’s a savings of $9.50 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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