Snap Circuits are electronic kits from Elenco designed to teach kids how electronics work. The Snap Circuits kit is targeted for children of age 8 years and above. It gives kids chance at real world hands-on experience at circuit board without worrying about soldering machine, making it safe and fun educational toy. Since it’s launch, this toy has won several awards including Dr. Toy 100 Best Children’s products and Dr Toy Best Educational Products.
The Snap Circuits kits works by “snapping” actual circuit components like resistors, switches etc. onto plastic snap grid included with the kit. With Snap Circuits you can create hundreds of different do-it-yourself projects. You can download an easy to follow step-by-step guide with complete with colored pictures. In addition to learning how electronics work that are used in everyday life like television or mobile phone, kids will also improve on their building skills by working on series of instructions.
Snap Circuits does not require any additional tools, everything you need comes right with the kit. It comes with actual circuit components like wires, battery holder, antenna coil, LED, Lamp, slide switches, a resistor, a microphone, and fixed and variable capacitors, and transistors to name a few. Each component is numbered and color-coded for easy identification and to match them with manual instructions.
You start with basic of electronics with simpler projects like series and parallel circuits, current controllers and equalizing, and amplifiers that teaches electronic basics like how capacitors or transistors work, or how light sensors operate. You can than move on to more interesting circuits like light controlled alarm, automatic street lamp, water detector, lie detector, AM radio, Morse code generator, laser guns, touch lamp etc.
Once you have completed all the projects, you can use the components to make your customized circuits or upgrade to higher model like Snap Circuits Pro or Snap Circuits Extreme. The Snap Circuits Extreme comes with additional CI-73 Computer Interface that turns your Windows PC screens to oscilloscope to let you see signal processing in the circuits.
Though the instructions are very clear, operating and building circuits kits may require some additional care to start with to ensure that you don’t accidently short the circuit. You can always order additional components or replacement parts online, so no need to buy a new kit if any parts get damaged over time.
Some of the essential accessories include Snap Circuits Battery Eliminator to avoid buying batteries frequently (or charging them). It produces different voltages as required by different projects. There are also some add on kits like Elenco Snap Circuits Lights that allows you to plug your music to the Snap Circuit kit and gives you a music controlled light show.
Snap Circuits comes in many variants, with basic difference in number of components included in the kit and different circuits projects that you can accomplish with it using step-by-step easy to follow guide. Some of the most famous variants are:
Basically, a higher kit contains more parts, higher project possibilities, and yes, a higher price. If you are unsure if your kids will like it or not and just want to try out at first, you can always go with most basic Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 . But in our opinion, you should start with Snap Circuits SC-300 since it covers some of the engaging projects like lie detector, laser lights and more. For about twice the price of SC-300, you can get Snap Circuits Extreme SC-750 with a computer controller interface.
Snap Circuits series is the number 1 best seller (as of this writing) in Amazon.com under Learning & Education Toys - Science category and for a good reason.
If you are thinking of buying an electronic kit for your kids, look no further. With its snap grid and illustrative guide with hundreds of projects, Snap Circuits is an ideal kit for your kids.
STEM is acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in education. There is a growing need to integrate all these subjects so that students can better understand real-world application of these subjects. Learning through experience creates a lasting effect and produces better result. STEM toys and activities encourages kids to develop STEM skills in fun and creative way. Today you have a lot more options to choose from than ever before. Our mission is to help you find the right resources for yours kids so that you can play the most important role in the foundation of STEM's future, that of a parent.