STEM Gift Guides

The three failure modes of a STEM gift

They are predictable, which means they are avoidable.

It duplicates something they own. The most common outcome for popular sets, and the hardest to avoid at distance. The defense is to buy either the obviously-not-owned thing (a microscope, a telescope, a subscription) or an expansion of a system so widely owned that duplication is fine — extra magnetic tiles are never wasted, and neither is a bigger baseplate.

It is a single afternoon. Geode kits, crystal-growing kits, one-model build kits. These are genuinely enjoyable and completely finite, and they disappoint mainly because they were sold as toys. If you buy one, buy it as an event and say so on the card. Our under fifty guide flags every kit in this shape explicitly.

It needs something you did not send. Five AAA batteries. Four AA batteries. An iPad. A parent with an hour free every Saturday. Manufacturers publish these requirements and retailers rarely repeat them, which is why every product page on this site lists the battery requirement in the spec table rather than in the small print.

Choosing by interest when you barely know the interest

“They like science” usually means one of three quite different things, and the right present differs for each.

A child who likes looking at things — bugs, rocks, pond water — wants a microscope, and it is the highest-hit-rate present in this whole category because the supply of things to look at is infinite and free.

A child who likes reactions — fizzing, color changes, the moment something happens — wants a chemistry set, and specifically one whose manual you can read online before buying. Thames & Kosmos publishes its full manuals free, which is unusual and useful.

A child who likes how things work wants a circuit set or a robot they build rather than drive. This is the interest most often mis-served: it gets bought a science kit when it wanted a screwdriver.

Budget, and where the value cliffs are

Value in this category is not linear, and there are two places where spending slightly more changes the product qualitatively rather than quantitatively.

The first is around the entry point of any system. The published example we keep returning to is Snap Circuits: the Beginner set publishes 21 projects from 14 parts, the Classic publishes 305 from over 60. The gap between those two boxes is roughly three times the price and roughly fifteen times the content. There is no version of that arithmetic where the small box is the better present for a child over about six.

The second is the sixty-to-a-hundred-piece boundary in building sets. Below about sixty tiles or bricks, a child runs out mid-build, which is the most common reason a construction set is abandoned in week two. Above a hundred they can build something enclosed and roofed, which is when it becomes a house rather than a wall.

Both cliffs argue the same way: one larger present beats two smaller ones, in a category where a second small set of a different brand may not even connect to the first.

Seasonality, briefly and honestly

Prices in this category move, and the live prices on these pages move with them — every figure you see is pulled from the retailer rather than typed by us, and where we cannot verify one today the page says “check price” rather than showing you a number from last month. That is the whole of our position on deals: we will show you what something costs right now, and we will not tell you it is a bargain, because we have no way to know that and neither does anyone else writing these lists.