Featured in this article
Creative Kit
Plus Plus Mini Interlocking Building Blocks Set
Amazon (600-Piece)
Sound Stage
Qubs Qubitunes
Amazon
Wind-Up Flashlight
Ambessa DIY Kinetic Flashlight
Ambessa
Knight School
Particula GoChess Mini
Amazon
Anyone who has ever watched a toddler methodically take apart a Tupperware drawer knows that many children are natural-born engineers. Your job as a parent is to nurture their creativity … and clean up the mess afterward. I’ve tested tons of STEM toys with my kids over the years, some with help from other parents on the WIRED Reviews team and some with help from my wife, who is a teacher and can road-test them in the classroom.
Wrap up a few of these STEM toys (also called STEAM toys; we love you too, arts!) for your future scientist to assemble, squish, or dismantle. Hopefully, they’ll thank you for the early encouragement when they’re older. Be sure to check out our assortment of other buying guides, including the Best Subscription Boxes for Kids, Best Speakers for Kids, and How to Build the Lego Collection of Your Dreams.
Updated October 2026: I’ve added Gravity Maze, an Engine-Building Kit, and Rush Hour Deluxe.
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Creative Kit
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Photograph: Simon Hill
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Photograph: Simon Hill
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Chevron Chevron to wishlist Plus Plus
Mini Interlocking Building Blocks Set
Amazon (600-Piece)
Amazon (1200-Piece)
There’s something super-satisfying about these tactile building blocks. They come in a range of appealing colors and have a slightly squishy form that makes them delightful to build with and pull apart. Because the pieces are all the same, children don’t have to spend ages searching for a specific block as they do with Lego. They can pick by color or just experiment, and it’s as easy to create bracelets and headbands as it is to construct robots and bridges.
These building blocks were very popular in the classroom with 7- and 8-year-olds. Some kids had fun just playing without something specific in mind, while others planned scenes and put their engineering skills to use to realize them. There are also some instruction booklets with suggestions.
For kids aged 5 years and up.
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Sound Stage
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Photograph: Simon Hill
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Chevron Chevron to wishlist Qubs
Qubitunes
Amazon
We’re in love with this screen-free play stage and speaker for kids. The cute wooden design includes a slot to insert a cartridge and a circular sound stage divided into four sections where you can pop characters on top to change the audio it plays. This basic functionality allows for a clever variety of add-on packs, from stories about quirky characters in the Groblies ($20) to a cooking game called Bernard’s Kitchen ($20) with different ingredients. My favorite is the Little Maestro set ($20) featuring players in an orchestra covering Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Bach. The stereo speakers are quite good, it has a headphone port, and the Qubitunes can be recharged via USB-C for up to six hours of play. My wife has this in the reward area of her classroom, and it’s the most popular option with 7- and 8-year-olds.
For kids aged 3 years and up.
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Wind-Up Flashlight
Photograph: Simon Hill
to wishlist Ambessa
DIY Kinetic Flashlight
Ambessa
Kids can build this wind-up flashlight themselves and learn all about electronic components and kinetic energy in the process. The thoughtful design includes 10 separate parts, and there are 16 steps to to assemble it. No batteries are required, and the kit is designed to be easy to disassemble and use again, making it perfect for a classroom setting. Our testers were delighted that simply winding the completed flashlight brought it to life (three minutes of winding provides 30 minutes of light). For every kit purchased, the maker, Ambessa, donates one to a refugee child out of school.
For kids aged 8 years and up.
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Knight School
Photograph: Adrienne So
to wishlist Particula
GoChess Mini
Amazon
Particula
I have been struggling for a few years to get my now 7- and 9-year-old interested in chess, and the GoChess Mini works wonderfully. This lightweight, portable board is beautiful to use—the pieces have a nice matte finish and are pleasingly weighty. Once you charge the Bluetooth-enabled board and connect it to the app, you can either play against remote players, against yourself, or get AI-enabled assistance to help guide your moves. You can scale the amount of assistance, whether it’s a little or a lot, and different-colored lights show you the advisability of different moves as you pick up each piece. One evening of charging results in weeks of playtime; my kids will play for hours and discuss each move as they go. It’s great.—Adrienne So
Particula also offers a Harry Potter-themed GoChess Mini Board ($350) which appears in my best smart chess boards guide.
For kids aged 6 years and up.
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Marble-Powered Computer
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Photograph: Simon Hill
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Photograph: Simon Hill
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Chevron Chevron to wishlist Upper Story
Turing Tumble
Upper Story
Turing Tumble is a wonderful way to teach kids coding fundamentals. It combines the simple pleasure of marble runs with a beautifully illustrated sci-fi comic book packed with challenging puzzles. The board resembles a pachinko game, and you have to slot in different pieces to divert the blue and red balls and get the required pattern at the bottom. My 9-year-old spent hours working through the puzzles, reconfiguring this marble-powered computer. As the challenges grew tougher, the whole family joined in to find solutions. Well-designed, satisfying, and rewarding, this is a good pick for most kids.
For kids aged 8 years and up.
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Coding Ball
Courtesy of Sphero
to wishlist Sphero
Bolt
Amazon
The Sphero Edu app is packed with computer science lessons and activities for different age groups. Bolt has an 8 x 8 LED board on top, various sensors inside (compass, light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer), and supports infrared communication. My wife is a teacher and uses this in the classroom to teach basic coding skills, giving students challenges navigating a maze. She says many kids grasp the concepts much faster than they might with a book or screen, because they can see the Bolt moving in physical space.
For kids aged 9 years and up.
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Marble Puzzle
to wishlist ThinkFun
Gravity Maze
Amazon
Kids love marble runs, and ThinkFun combines the joy of dropping marbles with a clever logic puzzle design in Gravity Maze. There are 60 challenge cards ranging in difficulty, and you must figure out how to place the available pieces to build a 3D maze that guides the marble to your target tower.
For kids aged 8 years and up.
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Endless Building Fun
Courtesy of Amazon
to wishlist Valtech
Magna-Tiles
Amazon
The return on investment with Magna-Tiles staggers me. It’s been years, and at 6 and 8 years old, my children can still occupy themselves with these for hours. Translucent Magna-Tiles click together to form both two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects. Younger kids can make a house with a backyard and fences, or ice cream cones. With an older kid, the sky is the limit—or, rather, your credit card is, since there are wheelbarrows full of expansion sets you can buy. My daughter can currently build a full village in an afternoon for her stuffed animals.
If these are too pricey, there are alternatives that work just as well, Picasso Tiles, which are $23 for 60 pieces. —Adrienne So
For kids aged 3 years and up.
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Robo Fun
Courtesy of Robotical
to wishlist Robotical
Marty the Robot V2
Robotical
Combining coding with robotics can be a great way of engaging kids, and Marty the Robot V2 is an irresistibly charming biped with nine servo motors inside that enable him to walk, kick, wave, sidestep, and even waggle his eyebrows. There’s a customized microcontroller inside, various sensors, Bluetooth connectivity, and a speaker, so there’s plenty of potential for kids to code various routines and an extensive knowledge base with lessons and tutorials. Robotical has designed Marty for kids of all ages, so at the basic level, you can use color cards (green to move forward, for example) to control him. Older kids can use Scratch, a simplified coding program with drag-and-drop blocks on a connected Android or iOS device, and when they’re ready to advance, they can move on to Python. Marty is cute and fun but very expensive, though it’s mainly geared toward use in schools, and there are lots of good resources for educators.
For kids aged 5 years and up.
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Construction Capers
Courtesy of Amazon
to wishlist Geomag
Classic Magnetic Building Set
Amazon
My entire household found this magnetic construction set irresistible, and there has been a new 3D structure on the coffee table every morning. The kit comprises glow-in-the-dark magnetic rods (crafted from recycled plastic), steel spheres, and plastic bases in different shapes. You also get storage boxes to put everything away in. There’s a guide in the box with a few suggested structures, but creating your own is a big part of the appeal. There are sets of various sizes.
For kids aged 3 years and up.
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Early Engineering
to wishlist National Geographic
4-Cylinder Engine Building Kit
Amazon
You can build a four-cylinder engine with this 175-piece kit. It’s fun to assemble, but there are lots of fiddly pieces (tiny screws and springs), so younger kids may need supervision. Once built, simply insert three AA batteries (not included), push the button, and it comes to life, with moving pistons, valves, gears, and light-up LEDs to help kids understand how engines work. The instruction booklet also includes a brief potted history.
For kids aged 10 years and up.
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A Twist on a Classic
Courtesy of Particula
to wishlist Particula
GoCube
Amazon
No one needs a Bluetooth-enabled Rubik’s Cube, but once you get your hands on a GoCube you probably won’t be able to put it down. Smart sensors inside the beautiful, glowing cube connect to a companion app on your phone and sense where each block is positioned. You can learn algorithms and strategies that will help you get your solve-time down. And if you give everyone you know a GoCube, you can also stage live competitions with friends and family! —Adrienne So
For kids aged 8 years and up.
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Sand Castles
Courtesy of Kinetic Sand
to wishlist Kinetic Sand
Amazon
My kids love this moldable sand and have happily spent countless hours over the years making tabletop structures. It behaves wet sand and never dries out, so you can shape it with your hands or use tools and molds to make castles. It comes in many colors and clumps together easily but doesn’t stick to your hands or surfaces. While it’s generally easy to clean up, it’s a good idea to confine play to a tray or table and supervise your kids, or you may end up picking tiny bits of pink sand out of your carpet.
For kids aged 3 years and up.
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Remote-Controlled Robot
Courtesy of Wonder Workshop
to wishlist Wonder Workshop
Dash
Amazon
This super-cute robot looks it rolled straight out of a Pixar movie. With a big, expressive eye atop three balls, it zips around with real personality, which helps it successfully combine play and learning in a way that all educational STEM toys aim for but many fall short of. Dash has lived with us for several years now and of all the coding robots I’ve tried, it remains my favorite. It’s a durable toy that works on a simple level a remote-controlled car, but it also ties in with various apps to play games, solve puzzles, and create programs. Lego connectors for Dash’s head add to the creative possibilities. Wonder Workshop also offers some optional accessories.
For kids aged 6 years and up.
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Comments
Simon Hill is a senior writer for WIRED and has been testing and writing about technology for around 20 years. You can find his previous work at Business Insider, Reviewed, TechRadar, Android Authority, USA Today, Digital Trends, and many other places. He loves all things tech, but especially smartphones and … Read More
Senior writer and reviewer
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