K'NEX Education - STEM Explorations: Swing Ride Building Set‚ 2 Pieces STEM Learning‚ Ages 8+

- 486 COLORFUL PIECES ? The K’NEX Education STEM Explorations: Swing Ride Building Set includes 486 different brightly colored parts. Pieces include gears, variously sized connectors, and multiple styles of rods: short, long, straight and curved. These parts can be attached together to build simple structures or elaborate constructions, enhancing children’s imaginations and turning their ideas into working creations. - STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS ? Kids can create a fully functional swing ride with this construction set. The package comes with a battery-powered motor that works on two AA batteries, bringing kids’ ideas to life. Aside from the swing, they can also build two other amusement park ride models with this toy set ? a boom ride and a Ferris wheel. Let middle-school students learn as they have fun with this K’NEX Education building set. - EXPERIMENT GUIDE ? The three included experiments contain complete details on conducting the hands-on, inquiry-based engineering projects based around the models and include information about the different parts and pieces. Parents can assist their children in the beginning until kids get the hang of it. - PROMOTES TEAMWORK ? Specially designed for children ages 8 and up, this engineering set is more fun when constructed with friends. Students in grades 5?9 can create the models alone or with two other classmates. Through teamwork, students will learn how mass affects speed, how to gear up and gear down, and much more! The set promotes camaraderie and the development of social skills, too. - STEAMagination : It’s the connection of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts & math) with a child’s natural curiosity and creativity and it powers the fun of each and every K’NEX building set. Building with K’NEX puts children on a path towards a fundamental understanding of STEAM/STEM subjects. - LESSON PLANS AND EXPERIMENTS: All K’NEX Education sets come with either a comprehensive guide for teachers or an experiment guide for student-led learning. All lesson plans and experiment guides are written by expert educators and feature hands-on, inquiry-based projects that engage students in today’s busy classroom. - ALIGNED TO NATIONAL STANDARDS: K’NEX Education teacher guides and experiment guides are aligned to national educational standards, including ITEEA, NSES, NCTM, NGSS and Common Core. - REAL WORLD LEARNING: Study after study reveals that students have more success learning STEM subjects through activities related to the real world rather than reading about abstract concepts in textbooks. K’NEX Education sets allow students to build replicas of real-world machines and contraptions and through the lesson plans and experiments, gain a concrete understanding of the principles that make them work.

From the manufacturer

STEM Swings into High Gear!

Stem Explorations

Explore STEM concepts while building a motorized Swing Ride! Using the materials included in this set, middle-school aged children will be engaged and energized as they further their knowledge and understanding of the science, technology, engineering and math concepts associated with a real-life amusement park ride. The set includes over 470 parts plus a battery-powered motor for a single child or team of 2-3 children to build a working Swing Ride, plus 2 additional models: a Ferris Wheel and a Boom Ride (each model can be built one at a time). Once built, a downloadable booklet guides students through 3 hands-on, inquiry-based experiments on each of the models. The Experiment Guide is aligned to national STEM standards and is appropriate for grade levels 5-9. Requires 2 'AA' batteries, not included.

K'NEXperiment #1: Slowing Down the Swing Ride. Your objective is to make and test predictions about how mass affects the speed of the ride. Do you think more mass will make the ride spin slower?

K'NEXperiment #2: Hanging Above the Ground in a Ferris Wheel. Your objective is to determine if there is any pattern that might be used to demonstrate the changing height of a rider as the ride turns through several rotations.

K'NEXperiment #3: Turn the Crank of the Boom Ride. Your objective is to investigate how different gear arrangements affect the distance the ride travels.