Amazon has launched a STEM Club Toy subscription box! This monthly kid's 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)
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)
March’s Toy: Logic Roots Math Games Bundle
Logic Roots Math Games Bundle - Retail Value $28.91
This month our toy comes from Logic Roots and includes two games that you can purchase separately. This card came in our box and describes the benefits of social math games like the two that were included in our bundle.
Ocean Raiders (Addition Game) - Retail Value $24.99 (found here for $17.50)
The first game we received is called Ocean Raiders and focuses on addition. This game is recommended for ages 5+ and is a 2-4 player game.
This game comes with a board, four sea-themed pawns, one di, and a booklet full of information and ways to play.
The first few pages featured a quick start guide, a list of contents, directions for how to play using an Alexa device, and the story to get your kids engaged before you start the game. They also gave detailed directions on how to win and how to make it more engaging as a parent or educator. This company really is about teaching skills while having fun, which I am all about!
They even provide some methods for helping kids add, which is really great if you are using this as a teaching tool.
The booklet provided several different variations of the game and even highlighted the core math skills that your child will learn through this game, including number recognition, sequencing, and of course various addition skills.
The board is basically a chutes and ladders type situation, but it is made up of typhoons that go up and down. The goal is to get from the start at the top all the way to the golden 49 where there is treasure, which is explained in the story they provided in the booklet. You'll notice that the numbers are not in numerical order, which means that your child can't just use sequence and counting, but instead has to recognize the numbers and do the addition.
My children are a bit young for this game, but they still were eager to play and I was able to help them along with the addition. It was a great reinforcer for number recognition for my 4.5-year-old! My 2.5-year-old just enjoyed playing with the fun pieces. The game was simply a matter of rolling the dice and adding that number to whatever number we were on to find our new number. Then, of course, there were some typhoons to change our tracks, every once in a while. The first person to get to the 49 at the bottom is the winner, so really there are no huge numbers to add since 49 is the highest.
Later on, while my son napped, my daughter and I played the collaborative game version which involved placing this pile of "rocks" on top of the 8. Then each round, the rock would fall down the board until it reached the 49. If we didn't make it to the 49 before three rocks fell onto the treasure, then we lost. Fortunately, we made it there in time! I loved that they gave us different ways to play the game!
Cloud Hoppers (Subtraction Game) - Retail Value $17.86
The second game we received is Cloud Hoppers and it is a subtraction game recommended for ages 6+ and 2-4 players.
This game featured a board, a 10 sided dice, a booklet, and these super cute aliens that came already assembled.
This game was much like the first in that the instructions came with directions for how to play with Alexa, a list of the contents, and a story about your quest to get you started.
The directions were very detailed and easy to follow and they even provided this helpful section on subtraction language which served as a great refresher for me!
For this game, we got to choose two alien playing pieces and we set them at the top of the board on one of the four spaceships numbered 50. Then we rolled the dice and we subtracted from 50 to find our next number to move our pieces to. Our goal in this game is to get to the Cyta plant which is number 20 in the middle of the bottom.
This is pretty simple but made harder by the fact that some clouds have various instructions on them such as "move to 21" meaning you get to move closer or "freeze for one move" meaning you lose a turn. If another alien lands on the same cloud as you, then you get kicked out and have to return to your spaceship unless you are on a safe zone cloud. There is also a Sprongi zone (the plants at the bottom) which sits below the Cyta plant and if you land on these you can roll and add the number to try to get back up to the plant. This one was fun for us to play and I modified it for my daughter by just drawing portions of a number line and having her count backward with me and tell me what number she needed to move her pawn to. For an older child, it would definitely be a great subtraction game with enough twists to make it interesting!
Verdict: Math is definitely not my forte, so I am glad that Amazon’s STEM Toy Club has me covered and is providing fun and unique toys to help make math more engaging for both me and my kiddos! I have always loved playing games and so far my kids seem to feel the same, so toys like these are always welcome in our home! Although my kids are a bit younger, I was easily able to modify this to make it easier, and in the same way, I think you could easily modify it to make it more challenging for older children. This toy retails for $28.91 and we only paid $19.99, including free shipping, so I think that's a pretty good value for some educational math fun!
To Wrap Up:
Value Breakdown: The cost of the subscription was $19.99 and we received a toy valued at $28.91. That’s a savings of $8.92 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!
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What do you think of this month's toy from the Amazon STEM Club Toy subscription box?
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