Amazon STEM Toy Club is a monthly subscription box service that delivers age-appropriate STEM toy that encourages any child to learn through play. The subscription costs $19.99 per month, and the theme of the month can be anything from natural sciences to robotics. There’s always something new to discover in every box of Amazon STEM Toy Club!
There are three age ranges available for this box: 3-4 year old, 5-7 year old, and 8-13 year olds. This is a review of the 3-4 year old box.
The subscription doesn’t include any Amazon-generated introductory materials – just the toy in its commercial packaging. It arrives in the usual Amazon shipping materials – multiple age range selections usually ship together.
Everything in our box! We ordered the 3-4 year-old and 5-7 year-old subscription items this month. This review will cover the 3-4 year old subscription.
In case you’re wondering what’s included in the other subscriptions, here’s what they have:
- Ages 5 – 7 Year Old Box – Kids First Science Laboratory.
Brio Builder Construction Set ($37.29): This kit comes with tools, fasteners, blocks to connect, and various accessories – 135 pieces in all.
The pieces arrive bagged and neatly bundled.
All of the containers in the kit.
Our whole construction set unwrapped.
The kit includes an “Inspiration Booklet” to get you started.
The booklet has a few project ideas, but it doesn’t include detailed schematics. It shows you a picture of the completed project and lists the pieces required to build it. The pictures on the left panel demonstrate how to use the various tools and pieces in the kit.
The booklet only has three simple projects, designing the rest is up to you!
The kit included a large pamphlet showing the many vehicle and building sets made by Brio for preschool and school age kids.
All of the pieces in the kit.
The basic blocks and beams are made of hardwood and predrilled with simple holes. The size is standard within the set, so any of the fasteners can be used to connect any pieces with holes.
Small wheels and large tires are included for making mobile projects.
The set includes several tools – a hammer, screwdriver, two double-sided wrenches, and a pair of pliers.
Plastic building pieces included a few slabs with holes, legs, and disks that can be used with the tires to form wheels.
Along with plastic nails, we received some spacers, cranks, washers, and a hook.
More plastic fasteners. The bolts slide freely through the pre-drilled holes, fastening with the nuts. The gray plugs on the right are rivets to use with the included pliers. The pliers are really helpful for removing the rivets, as they are the only piece that is a bit difficult to remove by hand.
The interchangeability of the fasteners is really handy – it let the kids build using all the pieces without the frustration of pairing compatibles together.
The variety of tools kept it interesting as well. I thought the inclusion of pliers and rivets was really cool. It allows you to connect pieces together without having a fastener protrude from the finish piece.
The wheel assembly can be attached directly to your build without need of an axle or other complex mechanism, so building cars can be quick and easy even for little kids.
I had to help a bit with instructions for the builds in the booklet, as they just had a picture and parts list, but my son (almost three years) was able to connect everything himself.
This was a fun little kit, and it is great for building simple vehicles. There is a good number and variety of fasteners and tools to experiment with, but the small number of blocks limits the size of a build and require immediate recycling of parts to commence any additional projects. Everything worked very well and was easy for a small child to figure out and use. It was a little more flexible and versatile than some of the other mechanical kits for this age group, so it did hold interest for quite a while.
If you received something different than our family, let us know in the comments!
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