The holidays are coming up, so we figured we should compile a STEM Gift guide for the fearless learners in your life! Whether you have a big budget, a small budget, or somewhere in the middle, there is something on this list for you to foster a love of STEM in someone you love this holiday season.
Low Budget Gifts
Books: as little as $1
Books are such a great gift for anyone of any age! Reading is such a great habit to instill in kids so that they become life-long readers and learners! Books are a way to get kids excited about STEM. STEM books can be full of project ideas and can be a great gift for someone who loves to make things!
One great STEM-themed story book is Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover- Markus Motum ($16)
This colorful 48-page book by Markus Motum tells the story of NASA’s beloved Martian rover—from its design, build, launch and extraterrestrial journey, but all from the robot’s point of view!
Puzzles: $5 and up
Puzzles are super relaxing, unplugged activity that siblings or families can enjoy together! Kids learn about strategy, problem-solving, and hypothesising skills into building a puzzle too which make them an awesome gift!
Zing Stikbot Studio $12.99
This is a great gift for that budding film-maker in your life! This stop-motion set comes with two figures with suction cups on the hands and feet so that kids can more easily make the small position changes necessary to get a good stop-motion video. And the free stop-motion app that’s included has cool features like multiple green screen backgrounds and sound effects. The set can easily be used with a smart phone to use green-screens and make epic stop motion movies!
Board Games: $15 and up
Board games are a great gift that allow the whole family to play and have fun together! Board games can teach some STEM concepts and problem solving. You can really gift any board game, they don’t need to be STEM-themed in order to be awesome, but there are lots of awesome STEM-themed board games as well!
Like STEM: Epic Heroes, which is a simple, fast paced card game that features some of the greatest minds in history racing to make discoveries and earn inspiration cards to accelerate their progress. Play as characters like Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie Emily Noether and more!
Another great game is Bugs n Slugs which is perfect for younger players. With this game you learn about all sorts of creepy crawly’s, some beautiful, some gross! Is a male ladybug still a ladybug? Do mosquitoes actually bite? What’s the difference between a moth and a butterfly? Lots of fun things to learn with this board game!
Or You could learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons, maybe even learn as a family! This one isn’t technically a board game but we love playing DnD at STEM Minds and we want everyone to love it too! DnD is making a huge comeback and it is a great way for kids to have fun together, or have fun as a family. The best part is that it is a very inexpensive game to get in to! You can buy a starter set for as low as $30 and after that all you need is pencils, paper, and your imagination!
Mid-High Budget Gifts
LEGO $20 and up
LEGO never gets old, even just giving a Classic LEGO set is great open-ended gift with endless possibilities. All kids need are their imagination to make infinite amazing builds! We even have a whole blog post dedicated to how awesome LEGO is!
Or you could get a themed LEGO set geared towards you child’s interest, like the LEGO Women of NASA Set ($24.99)
The set comes with lots of amazing women who have made BIG contributions to the STEM field. This set is a fantastic way to share the contributions these amazing women made to space travel!
Snap Circuits $20-$45
This awesome toy takes advantage of kid’s love for building toys, like LEGO, and uses that to teach them about principles of electricity and circuits! The components simply snap together and can be used to make a bunch of cool projects. The standard set comes with 60+ pieces to make over 300 different projects.
Chess Board: $25 and up
Chess helps develop high order thinking skills, creativity and memory and is a great un-plugged activity to have some fun together! It also is a great inexpensive gift option and will never go out of style, it’s a great classic game that everyone should learn!
Arduino Uno Kit $37
Giving the gift of an Arduino kit is great because it is such an open-ended present! Kits come with everything you need to make nearly unlimited types of projects. Kids or adults can learn about circuitry and programming and make amazing functional projects using Arduino. There are lots of online resources or books in your local library to give you project ideas and tutorials to make amazing electronic projects!
Tech Will Save Us: Electro Machines kit $49.99
Did you know that salt-based playdough can conduct electricity? The Electro Machines Kit lets kids power working gadgets that they get to mold themselves out of play dough. The kit is designed for learners as young as 4, and they can create race cars, robots and more and then control them with a mobile app. This is a great tool to learn the basics of electricity and circuits and have lots of fun while doing it!
Fort Boards: starting at $61.99
Kids love to build forts. Heck, even adults do. And lots of learning can happen while kids experiment with building strong and stable structures. However, it can also be a little messy when every couch cushion, pillow, blanket, and chair in the house is put to use to build an epic fort. Fort boards are a great toy that kids can use to build forts, but also they stack away neatly when the fun is over. Building teaches STEM skills like engineering, creativity, imagination, and spatial reasoning. And this can be a fun toy for siblings to share and play together! This is a great open-ended toy with lots of options for endless builds.
LEGO Boost Robot $159.95
Who doesn’t love robots? Introduce kids to the world of coding with a LEGO robot! The LEGO Boost robot is a less expensive alternative to the LEGO Mindstorms kit. The Boost is also great for younger children as the Mindstorms kit is also geared towards slightly older students. This set comes with the pieces to create 5 different functional robots, and then is controlled by coding on with a tablet or mobile phone, the Boost is a great to learn some beginner coding!
An Experience: Free and up!
We all know someone who has basically everything, so giving someone an experience is always an incredible and thoughtful gift!
STEM Minds
You could sign them up for one of our programs! We have all sorts of programs for lots of different interests, like Robotics, Coding, Entrepreneurship and more! Or gift them a day with us at our PA day camps to come test it out. Who knows, they may just find their new passion! All learners are welcome here, no experience necessary!
To register, just visit our Programs/Locations page!
That concludes our STEM gift guide! No matter what your budget, there are so many great options to give the gift of #FearlessLearning for the holidays!