Hot Wires Educational Toy - presses all the right buttons (John Adams Hot Wires)

Member Name: maria14

Product:	John Adams Hot Wires
Date:	09/01/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High Quality electronics kit - ingeniously designed

Disadvantages: I have tried and I can't think of any

This kit/game is an absolute winner. We bought it three years ago for my son (then aged 7) and he still plays with it from time to time.

It describes itself as a 'Plug and Play Electronic Set', suitable for aged 8 and up. It is priced about 37 pounds.

The easiest way to describe the contents is an electrical meccano set. There is a large assembly work station - a large piece of plastic with penny sized holes in it. There are then a large range of components, including switches, fuses, connectors, motor units, lamps, transistors - too many for me to list.

The clever thing is that they are all numbered and following the instructions, you snap the pieces into the board and each other to create circuits and in turn create burglar alarms, motors, FM radios, voice recorders - in total there are instructions for a 100 projects.

Some of the projects are genuinely exciting, particularly the flying disc and the lie detector.

As we played with it, we could see our son becoming more and more confident with his knowledge of electronics and the parts that are needed to create a circuit. The experiments (better described as projects) are graded and start off easy and progress. After you have completed one project, you just unclick the components and start the next one.

It is a game that dads especially can do with their children, both generations be genuinely interested. When we were doing a recent trawl for an ebay sale, both father and son wanted to keep this set..

From a mum's point of view - or at least the tidy uppers point of view, this game is really well designed to keep the bits together. It has alot of components, but because of the way the box is designed, we haven't lost any of them. This is truely remarkable for this household.

What's more, it supports the National Curriculum. And not a mouse in sight. What more could you want.

Boys will love this game. Our daughter hasn't taken much of an interest, but I think that's because we haven't taken the time to introduce it to her. I'm sat here looking at the box to review it, and I think it will be an excellent time this weekend to spend a few hours together doing this.

Splendid set

Summary: This is an excellent kit for girls and boys. Exciting, well designed and highly educational