A Holiday Toy List to End All Toy Lists (or at least ours …)

A swan song

We published our first list of engineering toys six years ago, 11 Toys to Excite the Engineer in Any Kid. It became the most-visited page on our website. By a lot. Like, by a factor of four. STEM toys already commanded great interest in 2014, and our list struck a chord because it was one of the first to take an engineering-specific approach to the topic.

This year, however, marks our exit from the business of STEM toy lists. This move might seem strangely considered, since STEM toys command only greater interest now. And the number of lists, sliced and diced by every imaginable sub-topic within the STEM universe, has exploded. Amid this explosion, we have taken various angles on toy lists to make our versions stand out – low-cost and low-tech toys, toys for the youngest learners, cybersecurity-related toys – but the flood of STEM toy lists has rendered our recent efforts much less visible.

Changing times

Our “early-mover” advantage has evaporated, and we do not have the resources or affiliated-product links to compete. Our 2014 toy list used to rank number 1 on the Google search results for “engineering toys,” but it’s been pushed down to the second page by now. So this year will mark our final effort at a toy list.

We have some other, fun ideas about holiday-themed blog posts to pursue for next year. But we’ll be leaving the field of toy lists to explore other areas of connection between STEM learning and the holiday-season focus on grateful retrospection and hopeful prospects for renewal and change.

Herewith, the goods

Our list this year is a list of lists, a parting gift to the list-makers who have taken up the effort of highlighting engineering toys in distinctive ways and to readers who might benefit from seeing them. Among the hundreds of lists that populate online search results, we picked out ten that resonated with us for various reasons.

If you’re going to look at only one list for engineering toys, make it the Inspire Institute’s Engineering Gift Guide. Engineering education researchers at Purdue University develop – and expand – the list every year with rigorous vetting and adept promotional efforts. Besides gleaning gift ideas, you will learn about engineering itself and how it works as a topic of pre-college education.

Because the best toys are timeless, we are including the 2018 gift guide from This Old House. Mostly house-related, the toys connect to all kinds of building and design activities that mostly boil down to elementary engineering practices.

STEAMsational focuses on engineering-related kits for kids, mixing artistic activities into a list of toys for all ages.

Childhood 101 offers a list that includes gifts not only for kids to enjoy but also activities to do as a family, mixing in books, to boot.

Imagination Soup also features a hefty volume of books in their long, age-arranged list, which is heavy on building and design themes.

Popular Mechanics put out a list with as much variety as any. Without being explicit about it, they have clearly aimed to reach across gender lines with items that hold appeal for both girls and boys.

The list from STEM Toy Expert focuses on pre-kindergarten ages, a time when almost all learning happens through play, and almost all play involves basic engineering skills like imagining, testing, identifying patterns and shapes, building. And wrecking!

What Do We Do All Day pairs toys with books related by theme or story. Nearly all the toys have appeared in previous lists of ours, and the addition of books to them is we wish we had done, too.

The Learning Undefeated list contains toys all under $25. And it’s a long list. None of the items represents any real sacrifice in prospects for learning or play.

The last list comes from The Kids Should See This. It goes farthest afield from engineering, but it is also one of the coolest collections of gifts we found. And the website itself has got to be one of the greatest, kid-focused collection of STEM learning videos anywhere. Anywhere! You should know what to do now …

One last time

You can also find all of our previous lists at the links below. We think they hold up well, but you can see for yourself:

And, finally

With that, we make our exit from holiday toy lists. We’ll return to regularly scheduled programming in 2021, with high hopes for a year that returns us to familiar, face-to-face learning activities, for all ages and in all places. As always, we appreciate your willingness to share word of our activities with your interested friends and colleagues.

Eric Iversen is VP for Learning and Communications at Start Engineering. He has written and spoken widely on STEM education and related careers. You can write to him about this topic, especially when he gets stuff wrong, at eiversen@start-engineering.com. 

You can also follow along on Twitter @StartEnginNow.

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