K'NEX Education - STEM Explorations: Swing Ride Building Set‚ 2 Pieces, STEM Learning‚ Ages 8+

Holy cow this set is fun! This was our first K'nex motorized set purchase so I was a little nervous that it would be difficult but it was not. My daughters (7 & 10) put this together mostly by themselves. They needed help getting a few stubborn pieces to connect but overall they were able to set it up with ease. After they got it all together we turned it on and it wasn't spinning. After looking it over I realized they hadn't jabbed the rod into the motor hard enough so I pushed it a little harder and ir started working. The motor requires 2 AA batteries that are not included.My girls decided it would be fun to attach some of their 3" My Little Pony dolls in the seats and it works. We were only able to put 4 in though, any more made it go too slow.This set it also able to be constructed differently to make 2 other designs but we haven't tried those yet. I love that it included instructions to make other things. I'm going to wait until they get bored with this before assembling it differently. Over great buy. Very fun set!

I got one of these for each of my granddaughters (10/12 yrs), and this product is beyond cool. The 12 year old and I put the swing project together last night and had a great time doing so. The directions were clear cut and easy to understand, and the pieces were not too difficult to snap together. (We did have sore thumbs by the time we were done, but no biggie.) My grand daughter is in MESA, so this STEM item is right up her alley. She pretty much breezed through it, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for kids over the age of 12, but it was still challenging enough to keep her very interested. Her sore thumbs were instantly forgotten the moment she turned on the motor and the swing started spinning around!We used a large, sectioned plastic vegetable tray to dump each individual bag of pieces into, which made it very easy to pull the parts we needed. I highly recommend keeping these all separate, just to eliminate the frustration of having to dig through all the pieces when you need to pull parts for the next step. It really wouldn't matter if you dumped everything into one bowl, but it would sure make getting the parts you need frustrating, especially with the tiny pieces.We were missing a few pieces, but thankfully had the other box to pull from. I'll be contacting K'NEX Education and hoping they send us what we need.

Quite a few tiny parts, that roll around the table or could be ingested by small children or pets. The toy itself is well made, and seems durable. The plastic is a pliable nylon blend that should stand up over time. Many parts would be tough physically for small hands to put together so its a good project for a child and adult to do together, but don't plan on it being something they can play with while you do laundry or dishes, cause you're going to get asked to put every other piece together for them. It's pretty fun to watch, currently its a christmas decoration on the mantle...

My 9-year-old daughter received this as a gift from Santa this year. She liked it a lot, and started assembling it right away. It is difficult enough to keep.her occupied for a few hours, but the instructions were clear enough for her to do it without any help. Not that I could have helped, I need instructions with words, but she seems comfortable with instructions that include mostly diagrams.The package advertised that it can be used to build three different models, but the model described in the instructions is just too good to disassemble just yet. It moves beautifully and looks perfect on my daughter's shelf, I don't think she will be making the others anytime soon.The one con that I found is that there's not even a spare for the smaller pieces. Some of the pieces are so tiny, if one falls on the floor it basically vanishes. This happened to my daughter, and initially she was extremely upset, but then she was able to improvised and save her build. I believe there should be one extra for the smaller pieces.

The K'nex aren't as sturdy as Lego pieces. Several of our pieces have broken. Try breaking a Lego brick sometime - you can't do it!The swing ride was a hit. Make sure to use fresh batteries as it really helps with momentum. The swings yes get caught a lot but once you get the hang of where they need to be, it spins very well. I read reviews of people who put Lego figures on them, but we couldn't get any (except battle droids, which are small & thin) to stay on. Not a big deal.Currently we have the ferris wheel built. Wish the other sets were motorized, but son (age 7) figured out how to use the motor on it. He was disappointed that it only came with the instructions for the swing and half of the instructions for the wheel (??? weird). He prefers a paper to read from to looking up instructions online.Overall this has been a fun toy for him to build and a break from the usual Lego. The motor feature definitely enhances it. I wish they made the pieces a little more sturdy.

This "toy" challenged my 5 yr old grandson but he stuck to it and got the whole thing assembled. The little motor is a big hit and now he is creating his own designs.

This has a lot of pieces and I didn't want to give it to my grand nephew as his sister is still a toddler and small pieces is a big no no around such a young child. So I took it to the Fire station down the block for Toys 4 Tots. Hopefully it will get to a child of the right age and be enjoyed.

Got it for 8 year old nephew and he built it fine with the instructions (mainly pictures not much words). He’s a good builder and likes the set a lot. Didn’t need any adult help. He takes it apart to build other stuff.