Ask HN: STEM toy for a 3 years old?
Hello! Can the HN community recommend me a STEM toy (or similar that would educate and entertain him) for my 3 yo boy? He's highly curious but I can't find many things to play with him :( The things that I like bore him and the things that he likes bore me (or are way too messy and dangerous to let him do them)...
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadTape measure with big numbers, ruler(s)
Measuring cup, water, ice.
"Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Dilly Dally Tootle Turtle Target Game (Active Play & Outdoor, Two Color Self-Sticking Bean Bags, Great Gift for Girls and Boys - Best for 3, 4, 5, and 6 Year Olds)"
Set of wooden blocks in a wood box; such as "Melissa & Doug Standard Unit Blocks"
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https://sugarlabs.org/ , GCompris mouse and keyboard games with a trackpad and a mouse, ABCMouse, Khan Academy Kids, Code.org, ScratchJr (5-7), K12 Computer Science Framework https://k12cs.org/
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61U4If6YrxL...
I love the outdoors and cant wait to get my little one out there. On the flip side, i fucking love computers and video games too so it's definitely a balance! When i was a kid i didnt want to program or anything. I wanted to run around, skateboard, play with kids in the hood.
+ Trains. Especially bridges and self-moving trains.
+ Cups. Water, sand, playdough, etc.
+ A robot that takes a series of instructions, and then you hit go. This is the most advanced, but she's worked out how to make it spin on the spot, and that is apparently hilarious.
I grew up loving k'nex, I don't see how that i wasn't enjoying my childhood
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries.[1] Symptoms may include behavioral problems, mood problems, and problems with thinking.[1] Symptoms typically do not begin until years after the injuries.[2] CTE often gets worse over time and can result in dementia.[2] It is unclear if the risk of suicide is altered.[1]
Most documented cases have occurred in athletes involved in contact sports such as boxing, American football, professional wrestling, ice hockey, rugby, and soccer.[1][4] Other risk factors include being in the military, prior domestic violence, and repeated banging of the head.[1] The exact amount of trauma required for the condition to occur is unknown.[1] Definitive diagnosis can only occur at autopsy.[1] Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a form of tauopathy.[1]
There is no specific treatment.[3] Rates of disease have been found to be about 30% among those with a history of multiple head injuries.[1] Population rates, however, are unclear.[2] Research in brain damage as a result of repeated head injuries began in the 1920s, at which time the condition was known as dementia pugilistica or "punch drunk syndrome".[1][3] Changing the rules in some sports has been discussed as a means of prevention.[1]
As a parent you can turn most any activity into an opportunity to learn math, science reading or whatever. Just asking questions is the core of learning. For example, the start of learning math is gaining a deep understanding of basic numbers. Simple activities go a long way... count things, add them together, split into groups, and so forth.
Just wait until they're school age and can make the conscious decision to learn what they're interested in at a much deeper level. You're just helping them lay the physical and mental groundwork for a love of learning when they're toddlers and pre-schoolers. It really is amazing when all that work pays off (as long as you can deal with the fact that your kids may not be grateful for it until much later in life).
But he taught himself using a talking book. It’s an ABC book that has buttons on the side for each letter and a voice says the letter and some associated word. He loves one button the most, the one that sings the whole alphabet. He presses it over and over again. Sometimes, he misses and hits X, Y, or Z. One day we were playing and he started pointing at X, Y, and Z and yelling it out to me. I was floored because I never taught it to him.
Now he manages to recognize letters and numbers in the real world. Signage on end caps in grocery stores, license plates, etc.
Also, I have video proof so I’m not making this up.
It’s totally crazy. He’s 18 months, been doing this since roughly 15 months.
I can’t wait to see how far he runs with this.
Littlecodr is awesome for that. It’s just a set of cards with instructions like move forward, turn left etc. get him to program you. It’s funny when the instructions lead you into a wall instead of between the door frame. Failure is fund
Some of the best stuff is also just dumb hands on stuff. Playing with cardboard glue and string. Making spaghetti towers. Folding paper planes. Magnets are awesome. Basically they learn from you, so the more time you spend together the better.
If your looking for low energy investment check out primo (primotoys.com). It’s little wheeled bot you program with simple physical tokens.
Osmo is also cool but I find the iPad platform derails their attention.
Littlebits is also cool, but the parts are a bit small for unsupervised play at that age.
Makeymakey is also rad.
Adafruits circuit python is awesome as well, but the play sessions would have to be quite curated. You could preprepare stuff and just do the wiring together with crocodile clips etc, but in all honesty maybe just a battery would be fine ;)
Looking forward to what pops up here :)
Also let him join in with things you do around the house (cooking? cleaning up the yard?) - just giving them something to carry so they can be part of it will make them so happy sometimes.
https://www.robotshop.com/en/code--go-robot-mouse-activity-s...
It's a great introduction to programming. You have to put in all instructions on the mouse to solve the maze. There's also cards with instructions that you can place on the board to make it even easier.
We also bought an IoT kit from from https://littlebits.com/ when he got older that we started to work on together.
The key here is to do it at a 3-year old level and that you do it together, it's not about finding the right solution or not. Be open to your kid's creativity and don't just follow the instructions.
Also, Magna-Tiles! https://www.lakeshorelearning.com/products/blocks-manipulati...
We bought a starter kit (pretty expensive I know) but my son has been playing with it for at least 1-2hrs a day for a year. They are part of every game he plays, whether it's a car race or playing with dolls.
But you're right, once she learned to follow the instructions exactly, she is having a tough time being creative. At the moment she's kind of obsessed with instruction-following. So there are definitely two sides to it.
What I meant was that you can be creative with these solutions. As for the programmable mouse, my son drew his own mazes on paper in the end and placed his toy cars and other things for the mouse to catch.
The basics are still there that he need to program the mouse and understand the fundamentals, but allowed for enough creative freedom to keep it interesting.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Battat-Take-Apart-functional-battery-...
Be prepared for about a decade of being bored with kids toys. Also realize that your child may not be interested in anything you are interested in, its ok. They are their own person.
* My youngest at 6 months was happy for ~10 minutes just holding a red 4 x 2 block
* Now he's 10 months old and licks the blocks and bangs them together
* My oldest at 1 - 1.5 years old, tried to stack a few blocks together
* At 2 years old he was building large towers, to collapse them
* At 3 years old, I could build something for him and he could "help" and add stuff to the building (with fantasy running wild; stack 20 random blocks on top of a carwash I intricately crafted and that was so "planes could land to be washed")
* At 4 years old, he could build stuff by himself
* Now at 4.5 he's learning himself how to reinforce structures, how to build "bridges", build cars etc.
I've been trying to get my son into STEM (robots, arduino, raspberry pis, everywhere). Alas, he is an artist and enjoys drawing manga, writing stories, and playing guitar. At first I was concerned because none of these are useful employment skills. I've learned to just go with the flow.
Site is in Italian but I ordered it off Amazon, the box is in Italian but that wasn't a problem.
Maybe something like the STEAM Park set. It uses DUPLO bricks.
Disclaimer, I work there.
Do let them help you with the hammer, wrench, screwdriver etc. even if the job takes 10x as long as it could. Be careful they don't get too proficient before they learn discipline and their limits, or they'll have your washing machine in parts when you turn your back...
But essentially everything that's not inherently social, literary, or artistic is a STEM project for a 3 year old.