The First Set Of STEM Enlightenment Toys I Chose For My Daughter

There are two products this week, the Btoys ball track maze for children over 3 years old, and the bilingual picture book “Little Pookie” for children aged 0-3. The author is the famous American children’s literature writer Sandra Boynton’s.

This article mainly introduces the Btoys ball track maze .

United States attaches great importance to the cultivation of STEM. This set of ball toys is the first set of real STEM enlightenment toys I have selected for kids. So today I will briefly tell you what STEM is. 

STEM is an acronym for the English acronyms of the four disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

The real core of American STEM education is the flexible integration of knowledge of various subjects.

It is no longer a single course module, but through various This kind of STEM toys/teaching aids, and extracurricular practice in class allows children to understand the connections between various disciplines, understand how the world works, and cultivate the ability to think logically, spatial imagination, and creativity through their own hands.

The ball maze recommended today is a representative of a classic STEM toy. Many kindergartens and elementary schools in the United States will see similar ones. Combining my understanding of STEM concepts, I will tell you why I chose this.

At the beginning of this year, I wanted to find a set of such ball toys. After comparing many sets of different styles of ball toys on the market, I finally chose this set of Btoys ball track maze toys. 

I remember that after I bought it and went home, I happened to be going back to China once. My kid’s father was addicted to it first, which added a lot of fun to his baby during that time.

This set of toys was just launched in North America in February of this year, and it was only recently introduced to China.

Criteria for selecting orbital ball maze

1. Wooden VS Plastic

Common orbital ball maze toys are mostly made of wooden materials. Although wooden has a good feel, its disadvantages are also obvious.

First of all, the price is high.

Secondly, the wooden track and the interface link are not as tight as the plastic material, the marble rolling is not as smooth as the plastic material, and the mechanism is relatively simple.

Finally, every mother is worried about the difficulty of storage. A set of dozens of pieces of wooden track toys cannot be freely disassembled and takes up a lot of space. Even if it can be disassembled, it is a very heavy box.

The first one has many wooden ball mechanisms and slides smoothly, but the price is really too expensive; the second one has an acceptable price, but the mechanism is dull and slides slowly, losing a lot of the fun of the ball maze toys.

2. Rich in playability

Although it is expensive, it is still very popular. On the one hand, it is very suitable for children to learn STEM while playing and learning from preschool.

On the other hand, it has a long service life. The playability is very rich . If you choose properly, you can play from 3 to 14 years old, and families with second baby are more cost-effective.

This is also a key consideration for my choice. I have also seen some low-priced and simplified version of the ball track maze. I strongly recommend starting with caution. Buying it back is really a waste of money.

For example, the following is not bad, but to me it is more like a building block than a ball track maze. If you already have similar building blocks, then this set is a duplicate purchase. Soon, the child will be idle after a few games, and the price is not cheap. Instead of this, it is better to increase the budget a little bit and get it.

In addition, the labyrinth toy must be more fun with more organs. When I choose , I will look at its components, such as whether it can be a “roller coaster”, whether it can not only slide from top to bottom, but also from bottom to top? 

Can several balls be carried out at the same time and the process can be divided?

At first glance, you will find that some maze toys have dozens of parts, and some have more than 100 parts, but the price is cheaper. But if you look closely, you will find that its components are all single, resulting in very limited playability. 

The limitation of playability not only affects the use time of this toy, but also affects the breadth of STEM enlightenment.

For example, the price is really friendly for the following one, but if you look at the components carefully, you will find that the creativity of building is basically limited to vertical uplifting, and the sliding trajectory of the ball is also limited to rotating sliding and free downwards. This is for me It’s limited.

So when I saw this set of ball track mazes by Btoys, it could be said to be a bright spot. Not only the shape design is eye-catching, but there are also many cute little organs, which are diverse in gameplay and affordable.

This toy has 62 parts, including 51 plastic parts and 11 glass marbles.

When all assembled, it can almost occupy half a rectangular dining table.

It should be reminded that glass marbles are small, even when playing with 3+ years old children, they need to be accompanied by parents.

The marbles move along the track. Unlike many wooden mazes that use fully open tracks, this toy also has many pipe designs.

Each pipe can be connected to each other. If the child is still young and stocks up, I suggest that you only give the child the basic pipe first and use it as a normal splicing building block toy.

Why is there a piping design? As I said before, the plastic maze is lighter and more flexible than the wooden maze, so Btoys’ maze has designed a very interesting “launcher”. 

As long as the child hits the ejection board with his fist, it can generate enough power to make the marble punch. Get into the track and slide the full distance. The general wooden maze can only drop marbles from the entrance.

The pipe of the link launcher is translucent, allowing children to try to hit the ejection board with different strengths and observe the changes in the height and speed of the marbles under different strengths.

This is actually the physical “acceleration” concept.

We certainly don’t need to let children understand the theory of physics, but we need to provide opportunities for them to experience it in games. 

After experiencing various concrete concrete examples in preschool, when they go to school and then learn these theories, children will be more interested and understand more deeply. This is the meaning of enlightenment.

You see, this is the design detail that I value the maze. It can have different play scenes, allowing children to discover the differences.

Above the transparent pipe is a luminous mechanism. When the marble slides over its track, it can trigger it to flash colorful lights. 

In addition to the marble trigger, you can also directly press the yellow star button.

This is the most basic “causal relationship” development . It is a bit simple for children after the age of 3, but it does not affect their fun of playing repeatedly.

Another example is this “roller coaster” mechanism , where the marbles complete a cool “roller coaster” journey and move on, which again contains the knowledge of centripetal force .

There are four such star gates in the entire maze . By adjusting the position of the lever and the angle of force , the marbles will produce different speeds. 

You can also put in multiple balls, and control the path of the balls by controlling the lever .

In addition to these small organs, the entire maze also has many ingenious small designs that make the rolling of marbles full of fun.

This set of ball track maze can not only support multiple small balls to play at the same time, but also designed a shunt device.

The marbles can go to different orbits through here. When the marbles pass, the eyes will turn.

The first time I started the ball track maze, my experience is to familiarize children from the simplest shape. Don’t look at the picture, it only uses a combination of three components . You can place marbles at different positions in the blue track area . The marbles will have different paths to reach different end points on the left and right sides.

Such a simple combination can exercise very good scientific thinking, “question-hypothesis-verification-summary”.

• I put the ball down, will it fall to the left or the right (question)
• I think it’s on the right (hypothesis)
• Let’s try it together (verification)
• Why are some on the left? Some are on the right? Does it matter to the placement location? (Question)
• I think it does. If you put it down from the purple side, it will fall on the right (assuming again)
• Let’s try again to see if this is the case (verify again)

You see, it is a very natural conversation that elicits from daily play, but it naturally cultivates the children’s ability to find and solve problems.

There is no instruction manual for this set of toys in the United States.