Amazon Stem Club: A Mom's Honest Review

The importance of play for children has long been recognized. Free play time helps develop the logic centers of the brain. Having a variety of toys and games around to stimulate your child’s brain is an essential component of your child’s development, from infancy into their teen years. Finding educational toys for our kids can be a challenge. It can be particularly daunting to find great toys that focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) for older kids. The Amazon STEM Club Subscription Program solves this problem for you!

STEM toys are especially effective at helping children engage in functional play. By having these types of toys available for your children even as they grow older, you are helping strengthen their brain development. When first launched in early 2017 Amazon's STEM Club sent a handpicked toy each month. Today, the STEM Club offers subscriptions with flexible billing terms that allow you to receive a toy every month, every two months, or every three months.

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The STEM Club toys are grouped by age to ensure that the toys are appropriate for different ability levels. You can choose 3-4, 5-7, or 8-13, with each toy shipment costing $19.99. For many of our purchases, this price has reflected a 40-50% savings over Amazon’s current price for the toy. I love that we can try great new toys while saving so much money!

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For some families, having a new toy to play with every month or two may seem like a bit much. Some children get overstimulated with new toys, and many of these toys are designed to be played with for a long time. But, if you don't need any new toys that month, the new arrival would get stored until Christmas or used as a birthday present for a friend.

Our Experience with Amazon's STEM Club

One of the recent STEM Club shipments was the National Geographic Mega Fossil Dig Kit. The kit included a dirt brick filled with several fossils, plus tools and a learning guide. It's the kind of toy a child will spend hours playing with. And since the items dug up are actual fossils, you're child will have some cool things to show their friends!

A big advantage of this STEM subscription service is that you won't just be sitting at the kitchen table playing science games. The toys are engaging, interactive and experiential. And they may even inspire your child to dig deeper into science and technology.

It is important to me to be able to provide quality toys for my kids. I choose STEM toys primarily because of their known link to encouraging children to pursue an education in the STEM field. STEM toys are particularly crucial for older girls because (according to this article) by the time girls are in middle school, they have lost their love of STEM topics. STEM topics are seen as “geeky” or less desired than other areas of interest.

By letting our children play with STEM toys, we are showing them that these toys can be cool. Not only that, but we are fostering a love of learning through play that can help our children be successful throughout their college years, and even into the workplace. Encouraging our children to see STEM as something vibrant and even cool will help them to be secure in their choices to pursue STEM education later, even as they may see their peers being steered into other interests. The goal is to help our children developed a well-rounded set of interests. Not one dominated by STEM toys, but one where STEM toys are part and parcel of many passions.

Amazon’s STEM Club Subscription Program is a great way to provide your kids with quality STEM toys on a regular basis . The money savings and the educational benefit to my children is a gift that will keep on giving.