Special Offer: MACARONI KID READERS CAN ENJOY 10% OFF Through July 2!
Includes ONLY: Gizmos and Gadgets, Synth Kit, Smart Home Kit, and Arduino Coding Kit
Cannot be used with the educator discount or chapter discount
Cannot be stacked with any other coupons or promotions
Use Code: MACARONI10
My seven year old daughter has had a knack for building and designing things ever since she started playing with wooden blocks and LEGOS (Duplo) as a toddler. Whether she was creating simple brick towers or elaborate castles and villages, she was easily entertained and enjoyed the independent play time.
While these building block activities remained part of her weekly toy rotation, as she got a little older she started expressing an interest in electricity. It all began after we came home from the mall one night to our hard-wired smoke detectors going off (for no dangerous reason). She was fascinated as she heard me on the phone with our electrician, who walked me through how to disable them until he could come by to fix the issue. From that point on, she would point out smoke detectors and burned out lightbulbs everywhere we went (Target, the doctor’s office, the mall, etc.). People would get such a kick out of her. And whenever our electrician came to our house to fix or install something, she would follow him around like his little apprentice with her toy tool box in tow.
Knowing her fascination with electricity, it wasn’t surprising to us at all when she asked for an Electricity-themed party for her fifth birthday. Her gifts that year included various electricity kits (from cool potato clocks to basic circuits/gadgets) and she very much enjoyed tinkering around with them whenever she had free play time at home.
Now at age seven, she still loves building and electricity related things. She also loves all things art — drawing, painting, coloring. She has a Crayola lamp in her room that comes with a remote control to change the color of the light bulb, she builds farm houses out of LEGOs to play along with her horses and she still tinkers with her electricity kits. So when the littleBits Gizmos & Gadgets box arrived from Macaroni Kid National for us to play with and review, she was very, very excited to open it up and see what it was all about! After familiarizing herself with all of the pieces and reading how it worked, she jumped right in to building her first basic circuit.
https://youtu.be/6jZNaA3LJ-c
One of the best features of littleBits is how easy they are to put together. My daughter loves how the pieces are magnetic. There’s something about hearing that snapping sound of the pieces being magnetically pulled together that seems to reinforce her confidence while building. She also loves the bits like the slide dimmer that enables her to manipulate the volume or speed of the gadget or gizmo that she is building as well as the DC motor that can run a fan or turn a wheel.
There are a number of projects that you can choose to build, from easy to difficult. Because this was her very first time playing with littleBits, she gravitated toward some of the easier projects. The Breezy Buddy (Personal Fan) was lots of fun for her and being artistic, she was also excited to build The Spinmate since it involved creating a character out of paper and decorating it with stickers and markers. Engineering and art…what a fun combination!
While the litteBits kit came with a booklet containing instructions on how to build a number of gizmos and gadgets, part of the fun is seeing what you can build all on your own. I left the box out on the dining room table for weeks and it was definitely something that my daughter went over to on a daily basis. Some days she opened the book to follow the instructions and other days she just tinkered around, excitedly calling me while I was cooking dinner to come over and check out what she had created.
https://youtu.be/aEQ9pwtYFAI
https://youtu.be/6jZNaA3LJ-c
One of the best features of littleBits is how easy they are to put together. My daughter loves how the pieces are magnetic. There’s something about hearing that snapping sound of the pieces being magnetically pulled together that seems to reinforce her confidence while building. She also loves the bits like the slide dimmer that enables her to manipulate the volume or speed of the gadget or gizmo that she is building as well as the DC motor that can run a fan or turn a wheel.
https://youtu.be/UXMw0hXD9c8
There are a number of projects that you can choose to build, from easy to difficult. Because this was her very first time playing with littleBits, she gravitated toward some of the easier projects. The Breezy Buddy (Personal Fan) was lots of fun for her and being artistic, she was also excited to build The Spinmate since it involved creating a character out of paper and decorating it with stickers and markers. Engineering and art…what a fun combination!
https://youtu.be/ILOhwDu4dEM
While the litteBits kit came with a booklet containing instructions on how to build a number of gizmos and gadgets, part of the fun is seeing what you can build all on your own. I left the box out on the dining room table for weeks and it was definitely something that my daughter went over to on a daily basis. Some days she opened the book to follow the instructions and other days she just tinkered around, excitedly calling me while I was cooking dinner to come over and check out what she had created.
https://youtu.be/aEQ9pwtYFAI
All in all, littleBits was a huge hit in this house! The pieces are clearly labeled, color-coded by function and the instructions for each gizmo or gadget were easy to follow without parental involvement. The only time my daughter called me over to help was to push the bits onto the mounting board from time to time. She says, “At first I thought it was hard to mount the pieces because I was too young, but the more I practiced it got easier.”
Now that summer is here and she has more time to tinker, she’ll be able to dive into the more difficult projects in the booklet like the Bubblebot, Bitbot and Rotolamp. While I’m excited to see how those turn out, I’m also curious to see what cool gizmos she will come up with all on her own. I absolutely love how littleBits seems to satisfy my daughter’s craving for engineering, electricity and art. Not many toys can deliver on all of that at once!
For more information about littleBits, visit www.littlebits.cc
MACARONI KID READERS CAN ENJOY 10% OFF Through July 2!
Includes ONLY: Gizmos and Gadgets, Synth Kit, Smart Home Kit, and Arduino Coding Kit
Cannot be used with the educator discount or chapter discount
Cannot be stacked with any other coupons or promotions
Use Code: MACARONI10
Publisher received complimentary product to give to her child in order to share this review. Opinions expressed herein are their own.
