Home School Product Reviews

Perfect for the Curious Budding Engineer!

This OLLO Action Kit was a great challenge for my curious 7 year old daughter. It did require my assistance in the beginning, but as she got the hang of the system, she loved figuring out how to build all of the variations in the designs. Additionally, the battery operated features brought her great satisfaction in completion. Caution – there are very small parts included in this set. Construction takes steady, patient hands and a willingness to endure through a challenge! Well worth the effort to build!

Really slick, works with younger children, too!

When my husband told me to order this (Electronic Snap Circuits Pro Kit) and the guides for our 6 and 4 yo girls for Christmas, I had my doubts. Our 6yo has been wanting to learn about electricity, so we’ve turned this into a unit study. I wanted to share what we’re doing. We DO NOT turn them loose with this – many small parts, we have babies. I’m a member of ABCTeach.com, and there’s lots of great pages on there to use. Although both of our oldest can read well, I read the info from the study guide to them and we discuss it, then we do the project. We have discussed things like electrical tape, plug safety, house wiring, atoms, etc…. I let the 6yo read and follow the directions on her own after we’ve done the project as a family. When we were discussing electrical safety around water, my husband pulled out the kit and used it to demonstrate how water can conduct electricity, using the water alarm project – GREAT visual! This is a product we can see growing with and using over many years! Highly recommended!

Ollo Explorer Robot Kit

After seeing some great YouTube videos and visiting the Robotis website, I decided to order the Ollo Explorer kit.

I’m really glad that I did – this really is a great robot building set!  There is a wide variety of colorful and well made plastic parts that connect together easily with little rivets.

The robots are small – most of them can fit in the palm of your hand.  There are addition parts to expand your kit, but most of them are not available in the USA yet.

The computer comes preprogrammed for 7 or 8 of the models, but you can easily create and download your own programs with the included RoboPlus software.

The computer is only about 1.5 x 1.5 x .5 inches, runs on 2 AA Batteries, and is packed with features: IR, Sound, Motor Ports, Communications, etc.

I am an adult hobbyist and I enjoyed building one of the walking models called the “Lady Bug”.  If you or your children enjoy Lego, K’NEX, or other construction sets, you will enjoy this one too!

Complete electronics course for your teen

We were really excited to get this, until we tried to use it. The holes in the motherboard (I think that’s what it is called) were too close together and it made it very difficult to use.