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Here's where you'll find all the latest news about technology for children. We love to follow cool new inventions on Kickstarter and we hunt out all the latest announcements about tech toys and gadgets for the coming Christmas holidays. You'll also get our take on children's technology stories in the media.

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Our kids technology product reviews are intended to help you work out whether a toy, gadget or kit is a good fit for your child or family. There's lots of cool stuff available, but is it the right choice for the child or teenager that you are buying for? We'll help you make the right choices and get the best value for money.

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Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends assemble. We create gift lists to help you make good choices for kids technology which helps them develop the right skills for the future. We research the best in Coding Toys and Games, Making / Craft Tools and Kits, STEM/STEAM related gifts, Programmable Robots, Electronics Kits and Gadgets for Tech Age Kids and Teens.

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Get crafty with technology. Here we'll post all our ideas and projects using technology to get creative and making with kids. You'll find anything from making a lemon battery to a glow-in-the-dark Minecraft sword. Our projects are tried and tested on our own kids or at events we run, so we are sure you can have a go at home with your kids. Some of our projects use specific tech gadgets which we provide links for you to purchase.

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STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. In recent years there is an increased focus in these areas of study. We like to include Art and Design too, so we often talk about STEAM (A stands for Art). At Tech Age Kids we believe Coding is a new literacy and children need to understand how technology works, practice making skills and grow in their curiosity to make a better future for us all.

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Coding is increasingly being recognised as an important skill for children to learn. Some will learn to code at school or at a coding club, but it's brilliant if they get support at home too.

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We think it's really important for kids to get hands-on with electronics and learn how to make circuits and write code to control hardware. Younger kids can start with conductive playdough. For kids who like to combine craft and tech, littleBits are fab. And we love SAM Labs wireless electronics components for making it easy for kids to make Internet of Things inventions. Lots of electronics kits for kids have support for the Arduino microprocessor environment. The DuinoKit Jr is one of our favourites. Arduino is a fab skill for older kids and teens to develop.

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We love robots at Tech Age Kids, especially programmable ones. We've got lots of them and write reviews and projects that use them. Our programmable robots for kids buying guide is a good place to start if you're not sure what's available. Roby the mBot Meccano robot dog is one of our popular projects and has been with us to lots of events. Our Ozobot LEGO trailer is fab for kids who love LEGO and robots.

MAKING AND CRAFT$show=/search/label/making

We're advocates of the creative use of technology, but this needs to be balanced with developing physical skills such as papercraft, woodwork, clay modelling, technical drawing and soldering. If children don't develop these skills as they grow up then physical making projects can become frustrating rather than fun. The Maker Community uses the term 'making' as a broad term to include all sorts of artisan skills or craft activities. Being able to make things can lead to life-long hobbies or even careers. It's a great feeling to be able to take a project from an idea in your head to a real object that does something. We're particularly interested to explore products that combine maker skills with tech skills such as electronics but others focus purely on the physical making skills that are still important to modern making.

K'Nex is a Brilliant Construction Toy

We'd rather neglected K'Nex as a construction toy until just recently and this was a big mistake. Luckily we've discovered the error of our ways and are really having fun making cool stuff with sticks and connectors.

When my boys were little they loved the Kid K'Nex sets with animal parts and chunky pieces. Then my older son received a very cool dinosaur K'Nex set for his 5th birthday. He played with it a lot at first (with help to follow the instructions), but I was always worried about losing the pieces and not being able to make the models again so I kept packing it away.



Several events recently got us back on the right track. Firstly we had a visit to a local science museum. My four year old and I spent about 45 minutes happily building things with the large collection of K'Nex they had set up at a play table.

K'Nex Sound Brick
Then we had played with the KRE-O Star Trek LightTech sets which made us think that we really wanted sound as well as light. I remembered that the K'Nex dinosaur set included a sound brick - it's motion or button activated and very cool for making models that can roar.

Then my son had a friend round to play who likes Super Mario so he asked me if you could get Super Mario LEGO. Well actually you can get Super Mario K'Nex sets. So that's a potential birthday gift for his friend.

And then we tried out Goldie Blox which got the boys thinking about making machines. Out came the K'Nex dinosaur set. And I remembered that I had a K'Nex Ferris Wheel with a motor that I'd put away for a rainy day. And now we're having loads of fun with K'Nex and wondering why we hadn't been playing with it before.

The boys are really enjoying being able to make quite big models quickly. And making models that do something.

K'Nex Cyclops Dinosaur
 Now, after many LEGO sets have disintegrated into plastic rubble, I have somewhat got over my fear of losing pieces from a construction set. And if we lose a piece then we'll improvise!

Designing your own models really is the point. This dinosaur started off as one of the models in the dinosaur set we have, but got adapted to be a cylops dinosaur because my son loves Greek mythology.

(We haven't actually lost the other eye, yet ...)



My younger son has a birthday coming up and he has asked for some K'Nex so I've been looking at what sets are available. There's a new K'Nex dinosaur set with a motor which looks very cool to mix up with our older set. My kids aren't so interested in the vehicle sets unless there's some kind of fantasy theme behind them.


K'Nex is great for learning about angles and shapes and for developing spatial awareness and dexterity.  And there's a great range of K'Nex Machines Educations Sets which teach kids about things like gears, levers, pulleys, wheels and axels.  I think we'd have a lot of fun with those so I might add one to the birthday list to give us some extra pieces and some educational activities to do.

My older son made half of the motorized Ferris Wheel before school today while his brother played with the pieces he hadn't used yet. They plan to rush home from school to finish it. They are already planning what they will build next using the motor.

I think they'll be playing with K'Nex a lot more from now on.

View: K'Nex Range at Amazon

24 days of Scratch coding book cover and cute penguin
Name

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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children: K'Nex is a Brilliant Construction Toy
K'Nex is a Brilliant Construction Toy
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Tech Age Kids | Technology for Children
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