Gear Toys Interlocking Building Blocks, 150 Piece Educational Engineering Building Toys Set, Creative Construction STEM Kits for Boys Girls, Waffle Blocks for Kids Ages 3+

My Middle Schoolers love this.

The media could not be loaded. This seems too complicated for very young children, but anyone old enough to grasp the concept and goals would find it tediously basic (like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole). I have used an app where there are functional double gears and the rotation speed is the relative "goal post". I find that app difficult as an adult, and I'm pretty nerdy so I don't see most of my peers doing it for fun. This has the potential to teach basic gear concepts (like the fact that a driving gear will change the direction of the gears it spins) but without noting anything (like the number of teeth or the gear ratio or even the direction) it can also just end up being like solving a jigsaw puzzle by trying to see if every single piece fits. You don't really learn any profound concepts from that.

This is hands on use your BRAIN….this held our grandsons attention and he played it for hours and then the next day…everytime we came over to the house it was the go to game ….it makes young minds think…it comes with multiple cards and several levels of learning….very engaging….happy we found it. Grandsons 5 years old and loves it.

Good concept for kids who enjoy figuring out how mechanical things work. The toy was not flimsy, but it was plastic and could easily become stuck. One gear cracked and was rendered defective when it fell off the table and hit the tile floor. The 8 yr old was interested for a while. Younger kids not so much.

This is a fun and very well-made set. It reminds me of competitors, like Thinkfun's series of games. The quality is similar, if not better. Just like those games, it comes with 40 different challenge cards, in four levels: beginner to pro. You place the card in the holder and it shows you which gears to start with and which ones you're allowed to use to connect them. Then you have to figure out how to connect them, so they all turn together. The pictures make it look like you might end up making gear systems that operate at different levels (upper and lower) but actually the upper gears are just for decoration.There are three minor issues with this toy:1) Once the challenges are done, they're done.2) There is a permanent storage for the cards but there is no storage box for the gears ... and you need all of them for the pro challenges, so don't lose any!3) There are many possible solutions for each challenge but only one is shownOverall, I think this is a pretty good toy. If you're looking for a game like this that's good for 6 - 8 year olds (and safe for siblings over 2 or 3), this is well made and pretty engaging. However, I think they missed out on an opportunity to make it more challenging by operating at different heights/levels, and I wish the pro challenges were a little more challenging. The 7 year old who tested this toy for me seemed pretty happy, though, and it held his attention for a while.

Here is a wonderful hands-on activity for kids (or adults!), and well-designed, too. All the information you need is always right at your fingertips, and everything is organized and user-friendly.How does it work? The set includes 40 challenges in four levels of increasing difficulty, and these are printed on large format cards which are separated by tabbed dividers. One additional divider is a bookmark so you can save your place as you work your way through the challenges, and the instructions for the activity are printed there in clear, correct English. The cards are double-sided, with the front showing both the set-up for that particular puzzle, and, in the bottom margin, the gears which you need to use to solve it. The reverse shows a possible answer, although some puzzles could have more than one solution. A large slot at the back of the board holds all the cards, keeping them safe, together, and organized. The front of the board reminds me slightly of the popular boardgame Sagrada, in that the board has an overlay, and you slide in the card for your current puzzle behind that. This is great because then all you need to do before you're ready to begin is to make your board match the underlying card. Place the maroon gear directly over the picture of the maroon gear, and so on. So not only does integrated card storage keep you organized, but the card slotting into the board makes set-up a breeze.The concept of the activity is, given the assigned start and end positions on your card, and using only--and all of--the prescribed gears, can you form a continuous line so that when you rotate the starting gear, every gear in sequence turns, all the way to the ending gear? I think it's an interesting concept, and one which does really and truly promote the much-touted STEM thinking. You will need mechanical and spatial understanding, as well as logic and problem-solving skills, and the quality is there. I found no physical issues with the materials .