CIRCUITMESS Wacky Robots - Resistron I Learn Soldering & Electronics I Education I al DIY Soldering Practice Kit I Learn About Resistance and Ohm's Law I STEM Kit I Robot Kit

We homeschool and have collected quite a few different hands on tools for learning about electronics before, but these little soldering kits are a category of kits for kids I haven't seen before.The projects are on the small side (as in the box it comes in is barely bigger than a deck of cards!), but I'm good with that - I don't need more clutter and large footprints in my life.Soldering is required to build these, my ten year old required supervision (and some help to get started as the directions are aimed more at the adult helper than the kid... )Fun project overall, and I think it provides both a great hands on educational experience to build, and going forward a fun visual to draw upon to better remember/understand how circuits work. Great STEM activity.

Another great CircuitMess educational & practice soldering & electronics kit. This time, "Resistron" is a simple 'bot, with a battery, resistors, red LEDs, and a variable resistor. The soldering is as usual, simple & straightforward, **but** a slight design flaw, per-se becomes apparant once in the final stage. As seen in the photos, the coincell battery goes "overtop" of the two "eye" red leads. Normally this might not be a problem, but the two connectors on the backside of the battery holder are very short, and if you're sloppy at soldering like myself, and leave some behind on the backside where the LEDs fit, there's almost no practical way to fit the battery holder overtop of it and fit the two leads in, and also solder it on. Very frustrating when everything's nearly complete and you find you can't fit the leads in nor connect them w/ soldier because it's so short & such. Even while making it fit, I broke off the coin-cell clip that pushes the battery into making a connection. In the end, it worked great, I could spin the variable resistor's dial and control the brightness of the LED eyes, BUT only if I gently held the battery in on the back. A bit of a bummer, that could be redesigned to avoid by locating the battery somewhere else, bu oh well. Other than that flaw which can easily trip up a newbie, a great educational kit!

I was disappointed in this item. The advertisement did not mention that users need their own soldering iron, so my kids weren't able to use this toy. It's also rather advanced and complicated (and it contains many small pieces,) so I wouldn't recommend it for children under 12 without adult help.

I got this for my daughter who is almost 8 years old. She has always loved science and doing STEM projects and I like when I can find something unique for her to do. This ended up being a family activity as both my husband and I were very intrigued with it as well. It isn't as big as I thought it was going to be, it's rather small, but my daughter still enjoyed being able to solder a robot by herself. This is the perfect gift for anyone that enjoys STEM.

The coolest thing about these robots is that they come with trading cards so that the robots can be played as a card game!I bought (2 of) these as a project to do with my nephews, and we will probably buy more. I want them to be able to play the card game and learn how things like this works. The card game teaches strategy and how to follow rules to win and of course the soldering teaches them about mechanics and science. Love it!