I am, admittedly, a sucker for a good subscription box. Buy Smart Circuits at Amazon - $50 Playskool Shape Sorter My one critique is that the jumper wires can be tough to insert and might require a bit of patience - something we know not every eight-year-old has an abundance of. The kit comes with instructions for 50 projects, but with the parts available a creative child could build quite a few more. But there’s also a tilt switch, a light sensor and a microprocessor capable of handling some relatively robust tasks. There’s the usual electronics kid fare, like LEDs, a speaker, a potentiometer and two buttons. And they’re all housed in large colorful plastic that should be easy for a kid to handle. The kit itself only has a few pieces, but they’re quite flexible. This gives kids an extra element to play with when they graduate to designing their own circuits.

The snap-together baseboard can lie flat on a table like a regular breadboard, but it can also be folded into a cube or the pieces can be attached at a 90-degree angle. It can take a kid from simple blinking lights to complex motion-controlled games. When it comes to introducing kids to electronics there are a ton of options, but I personally like the Smart Circuits kit. Shop Lovevery kits Smart Lab: Smart Circuits Everything is safe and well-built, and most importantly, highly engaging. It has been nice to refresh our child’s toys with things that are more appropriate for his developmental stage on a regular basis. I can attest after nearly a year and a half that the service is great. The kits aren’t cheap: the boxes for babies are $80 each and when you hit one year they go up to $120. At this point, things get understandably more complex and the boxes arrive every three months. The kits come every two months through the first year. Each box is a mix of toys and books (or cards for little babies) that start at birth and go all the way up to four-years-old. It’s a mail-order service that delivers specifically timed play kits designed around Montessori tenets for different developmental windows. Lovevery tries to reduce the stress by doing all the picking for you. It can be a daunting task picking the best toys to help your baby learn and develop through the toddler and preschool years.

Tegu blocks