This was our first month of Tinker Crate and I was very excited to see how much my daughter would enjoy it. Tinker Crate is a monthly subscription box, geared toward children ages 9-14, that focuses on the sciences. My daughter is only 5 1/2 but I felt that many of the crafts offered through Kiwi Crate, their box for children ages 4-8, contained experiments I could easily recreate at home. Tinker Crate offers projects that would expensive if I had to buy all of the individual parts or kits. I do not expect my daughter to understand all of the concepts, but she has a higher interest in engineering projects than most kids her age. The box is $19.95 a month with free shipping. There is a link down below for $10 off your first box. Now for the box.
Included is a booklet which explains the smaller concepts of your project. This box had projects to explain current, resistors, capacitor, and diodes. We went straight for the main project and I will have my husband go over this information with our daughter later. He has a background in Physics and is amazing at explaining scientific concepts to her.
They also had a little background on Edison and Tesla. We will have to simplify some of the language but that shouldn't be a big issue.
The instruction are easy to follow for parents. Children will need help or oversight if they are in the younger age bracket. I found that the light bulb wire bent when inserting them into the cardboard near the end of the project. So some children will need help in some areas of the project.
In this project they continually had us checking the lights to make sure we had everything just right. It was really helpful to be reminded, otherwise we would have gotten through the project with a non-functioning light. My daughter was very excited when it lit up and started to put some of the simpler concepts together. She was more interested, however, as to how the motor worked, so we will be finding another project or watching a video to better understand motors.
This flash light has two led bulbs and came with replacements when they burn out, which will be helpful later on.
The only issue we had with constructions was attaching the motor. As you can see on the right side, its attached by flimsy brackets which can make using the hand crank difficult as it wobbles back and forth. I will attempt to find some small flat screws to attach the motor so it does not move. Its too difficult for my daughter to turn the handle while pulling away from the box, which is a result of the lose brackets.
Overall I am very pleased and will continue this subscription for the time being. I'm still tempted to try Kiwi Crate so we may try that for a month or two as well.
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