Review of K'NEX Education - Forces, Energy & Motion

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program This K'Nex kit is great for the classroom or homeschool unit. This is an excellent resource for kids. We had great fun putting together the cars in this kit. My 8th grade daughter had a great eye for the instructions and together we've had a lot of fun with this kit. The kids in Tech class enjoy these types of activities as well.

This is an inclusive teaching aide. The K'Nex Education Forces, Energy & Motion comes with all the parts needed to make several different types of car: motor driven, spring driven, air driven and rubber band driven all super engaging. The directions are such that kids have to focus and use logic to put together the units. They are not so detailed that a zombie could put them together so they do require brain power.

Also included in the kids are the detailed instruction books that included instructions for each type of K'Nex car, and a CD for teacher information to help teach kids the different aspects of force, motion and energy.

This kid provides hours of brain fueled fun great for groups and teams. The parts are sturdy, though some take a little muscle to click together. The building instructions are first rate and the projects are very clever. This also comes in a solid, sturdy case for safe keeping with plenty of room to gather the pieces for a project and do the work inside the case so no pieces get lost. This is for ages 10 plus, little kids would probably get frustrated unless an adult does the work from the instruction booklet and has the child gather the parts and participates in simple ways in the construction. This is a great kit for 6th grade through 9th grade aged kids.

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I have used both Lego educational products and K'nex in my science and math classrooms. My general preference is for K'nex for middle school and up and Lego for elementary school (with the exception of the MindStorms Lego sets which are excellent for computer programing at the high school level). This is actually based on the physical difficulty of assembling K'nex vs Lego, which is probably why K'nex is marketed as age 10 and up. K'nex takes more physical force and dexterity to assemble, but the type, size and physical integrity of the of structures are much better with K'nex. One can build very large structures with K'nex (such as meter long bridges, meter high roller coasters and so on) that are precluded by the weight of the bricks for Lego.

K'nex lends itself far better to engineering and physics problems as it is much sturdier (although not a sturdy as Erector sets!) and one can build cars and structures that will hold together throughout testing. For physics and engineering projects (motion, machines, conservation of energy, structure building) K'nex is clearly better than Lego.

I also use K'nex in my math classes when I need to show 3D structure.

As a teacher you can register on the K'nex education site and receive access to lesson plans which are linked to the Common Core Standards. This is quite useful.

For this specific set I was pleasantly surprised by the included teacher's manual (on CD as a pdf). The writer clearly understands that students should not simply be given a set of instructions to follow but instead the students are led through the steps of the scientific method and not ordered to collect data in a certain manner. This is actually inquiry based learning. A word of warning, these sort of labs take a long time, but the time is not wasted. Students are engaged in actually DOING science, rather than following some recipe. For higher level thinkers who stay on task I actually completely abandon the worksheets and tell them to design a lab to test, say, how weight and number of windings of the rubber band motor impact distance traveled. However, if time is very tight in your class, using the provided lab outlines would provide enough structure to make certain that the students are progressing and will ensure that there are enough K'nex parts for each group. In the past I have simply bought the K'nex parts via retail (they are fully compatible with the educational versions). You can order replacement parts but I have actually found that I can often get the pieces I need more cheaply by scrounging from other sets. What I do really like about these educational sets is that there are enough parts to build multiple of the same model (say rubber band powered car) at a time for direct comparison. K'nex parts are pretty sturdy, and I rarely have students break them.

I would not suggest this specific set for an individual child. Since many of the parts are identical, for your money you could get a larger selection of different parts by buying less specific sets.

The set specifies that you can organize the parts, but the case itself does not actually have any dividers, which is strange as the bottom was clearly designed to accept movable dividers.

There are two battery powered motors (batteries not included), two flywheel powered motors and 4 rubber band powered motors included. These are usually the limiting factors when building (along with the wheels).

Four books of building instructions are supplied. I would suggest groups of 2-3 ideally, but 4 at the maximum, otherwise some students simply stand around and watch. So for a large class you will need more than one kit.

(Hint: many of these labs require a stopwatch, if your students have smart phones they can download stopwatch apps (they may have them already) which actually work better than cheap stopwatches)

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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program I find this K'Nex set to be a wonderful teaching tool. Something that the kids don't mind learning about. It's quite enjoyable for them to build the variety of vehicles that can be made with this set and make predictions before they test their creations.

The directions are very easy to follow. There is a bit of difficulty at times snapping the pieces together. This may make it a bit more challenging for the younger age level that is recommended but the older kids should enjoy the challenge.

This set comes with a wonderful Teacher's Guide on disc that is very beneficial and it comes in a very durable storage tub.

The variety of vehicles that can be made with this set is very nice. They're all lots of fun and the kids seem to enjoy making all of them and racing each other.

I find this to be a very nice teaching set that would be great for classroom, daycare, home school or even a great summer activity to keep kids learning. I would highly recommend it.

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I purchased this kit as part of University class requirement but can't wait to incorporate the kit into my regular classroom. The building instructions and teacher information is easy to read and very helpful.

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I bought this for my boy and they loved this toy, especially the motors and springs. Though they played with this toy at home, I think it would be great in a classroom. I think their teachers would like the concept too.