I’VE PRAISED THE SNAP CIRCUITS KITS BEFORE, and here’s another email from reader Susan Harms:

I read you regularly and your comments on Snap Circuits prompted me to buy the beginner set for my grandson on his 5th birthday, Apr 28 this year. The 300 upgrade will be at Christmas.

He can read, knows his numbers and works on “plusses and take-aways” with his dad.

He can read and follow the directions for Snap Circuits and has built almost all of the ones in the book. even experiments on his own. His dad is teaching him to call the “resistor” by its name instead of “wiggly squiggly” as Liam called it.

He failed yesterday to get one to work, and his dad (my son) told him, “recheck your schematic”, Liam did and fixed it. How many fathers have ever said this to a 5 yr old. Keeps him occupied for hours. Builds them over and over. Loves the noisy ones.

(Of course we think intelligence is totally inherited, Grandpa and I are both PhD chemists, and his dad is an engineer (Co School of Mines) + MBA (TAMU).

Thanks for letting me contact you thru this email. And thanks for turning me on to Snap Circuits. What a genius invented it!!

Always nice to see kids acquire some real-world skills. And here’s an older post on electronics-learning for kids.