Kevin'sMom Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 On the advice of several of you, I bought an Elenco Snap Circuits Extreme set. Being a little :) controlling, I don't want my son to play with this until we read the instructions, actually have a project in mind, etc, which I have not had time to do yet. He won't leave it alone, though! Should I put it up or let him play with it at will until we have time to sort it out? It was pretty expensive, so I am worried about it, but admit I don't know much about it, anyway. Maybe he can't hurt it by snapping stuff together? Help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erica in OR Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 How old is your son? I just let my kids loose on it. The directions are easy to decipher and they did many projects in a row at one sitting. The pieces are pretty durable. The only one we've had an issue with breakage over several years was the longer wire that has snaps at the end. The snap on one end frayed off. If you need a project, start with the one that uses the helicopter-type wheel spinner and shoots it up into the air. My kids loved that one. Erica in OR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyontheFarm Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 My son blew up the light because he wasn't watching and matching the voltage number properly. Depending on his age, give him a quick over view of the safety chapters and do a project with him. After that let him go and explore. Elenco was great to replace it for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Texican Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 I keep mine on a shelf and my kid can only play with it at the table with permission and put every piece back when he's done. You can't mess it up by snapping them togeather wrong. It's fine to let them play with it. It's sturdy to play with at the table. One time, my kid grabbed it off the shelf instead of waiting for me to get it down. He dropped the box from that high and shattered the battery pack and speaker. It was easy and cheap to replace the broken pieces from Elenco, which I learned about from this forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherry in OH Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 My children have unlimited access to their Snap Circuit sets. In three years, the only broken piece has been the wire ends noted by Erica in OR. They do seem to eat batteries though. DH sometimes challenges the boys to build specialized circuits. Otherwise Snap Circuits are like LEGOS in our house. Build what you want but please get them off the floor when you are done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 Yeah, we did a quick "make sure you don't make a short circuit, and here's how to avoid that" lesson, and then we let them loose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin'sMom Posted April 14, 2014 Author Share Posted April 14, 2014 Thank you all SO MUCH for those very helpful suggestions! My husband is doing the safety lesson and one project (the helicopter one) as I write. He is going to play with it on the table and put all the pieces away when he is finished. It appears that it will be the best toy ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitten18 Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 My children have unlimited access to their Snap Circuit sets. In three years, the only broken piece has been the wire ends noted by Erica in OR. They do seem to eat batteries though. DH sometimes challenges the boys to build specialized circuits. Otherwise Snap Circuits are like LEGOS in our house. Build what you want but please get them off the floor when you are done. On amazon there is a Snap Circuit Battery Eliminator for $15. You can plug it into the wall instead of batteries, might be worth it. My DS has his (several sets) snap circuits in his room and plays with them whenever he wants to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stars Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 After going carefully over the "don't do this; it's a short-circuit" thing with my ds, I've let him do his thing with the Snap Circuits. It's always been fine, until the other day when he was trying to show us the circuit he'd made that would flash lights to music. Smoke started coming off the circuit! We made him turn it off right then, but I'm not sure what the problem was. I don't know how old your son is, but mine is 6, and I wonder if he checked the circuit carefully enough. So I would have said it was fine to let your son play with his circuits unsupervised until this happened. Now I'm kind of worried about it myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mliss Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 The online electronics classes my son has been taking from QuickStudyLabs uses SnapCircuits, and the instructor has all kinds of warnings about connecting the components correctly. It turns out it's possible to burn out polarity conscious components if they aren't in correctly or if there isn't enough resistance through the circuit. Capacitors can explode if they aren't placed in just right. I had no clue this was possible when my son borrowed a friend's Snap Circuit set a couple years ago. DS became bored with the instructions and just started snapping pieces together. We returned the set after he left a self designed circuit unattended and a few minutes later the smell of overheated electronics starting flowing into the kitchen (yikes!). So, my advice is to put the set up until you have read the instructions and have a project in mind. Or make your son promise he will only follow the instructions in the book - no random circuit creation allowed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Korrale Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 My son can read all the instructions. I prefer him to. But I don't enforce it. He has not broken anything yet. But I have heard that putting it together incorrectly can cause circuit shorts. I guess that doesn't worry me though because there is a replacement part warranty that comes with the set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 You can get a replacement part by filling out the form http://www.snapcircuits.net/support/replacement_upgrade My younger boy broke the jumper wire into two so now we have one less. I haven't bother to get the replacement yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stripe Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Keep younger siblings away. My kids are very careful with theirs (although the fan piece did break a bit while flying madly around the room), but the little one thought it would be fun to snap pieces off. Yow. Per board advice, I bought the plug battery replacer thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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