Snap Circuits SC-300

Electronic Snap Circuits by Elenco is an award-winning toy for budding engineers eight years old and above. The SC-300 model includes over 60 parts for creating more than 300 exciting projects. With lights, sounds, motors, and more, you’ll not only enjoy creating beeping games, but also learn about basic electronics as well!

Real Electronic Parts
Electronic Snap Circuits includes real circuit components just like the circuit boards inside radios, televisions, computers, and other electronic devices. This set makes it easy for anyone to create simple electronic circuits and devices. To operate, you simply snap the electronic elements onto a plastic grid, and then connect them together with wire pieces that snap easily into place.

The SC-300 lets you build electronic devices such as a whistle chip, speaker, alarm circuit, LED, lamp socket, fan motor, and a speaker. Additional pieces can be purchased separately, or in different models, and they can all be used together to create larger and more elaborate projects.

Making Electronics Fun and Easy
The included instruction manual offers 305 projects ranging from a simple light switch to a noise-activated burglar alarm. We found the color-coded instruction manual clear and easy to understand, and we had no problems creating any of the projects we tried. The projects are organized by levels of difficulty, and each project teaches an objective such as “To show how electricity can only pass in one direction through an LED.”

We definitely experienced a sense of satisfaction as we completed each project, and we definitely learned about electronics concepts. The manufacturer recommends the set for ages 8-108; younger engineers should be able to easily follow the diagrams for each project, but will probably require their parents to help explain how everything works. So a word of warning to parents: Brush up on your high school physics! Although the instruction offers some good information, we found that we still needed to brush up on the physics we learned years ago so we could understand concepts such as the difference between a circuit in parallel and in series.
This educational kit is loaded with more than 300 projects to build. For example, kids can learn how transistors and capacitors function, and how to make time-delay circuits. In addition, this version includes circuits showing how oscillators and photo sensors work. Projects involve an AM Radio, Burglar Alarm, Radio Announcer and more. Contains over 60 parts. Requires 4 “AA” batteries, not included.

Snap Circuits SC-300 Reviews:

I bought this for my 8 year son for Christmas. He has really enjoyed it. There are so many different projects they can build with it and they are interesting. As far as learning about circuitry… I don’t think snapping things togehter teaches this. It does help them to understand things must be hooked together correctly to work. Overall we love it.
My son is moderately interested in how things work and has bursts of creativity designing and building Lego projects. Both his grandfathers were engineers, so I continue to try to encourage this side of his heritage with appropriate toys.

I’m glad to have stumbled on Snap Circuits. A child can easily assemble a working gadget with these simple parts. My son was really proud to have made an AM radio. My dad used to teach a class at a church craft club in which the kids made radios. It took weeks of fiddling and fine-tuning. I can’t imagine my son having the patience for that enterprise!

Because of the simplicity of the process, though, I’m not sure that my son has gained much knowledge of how circuits work. But his fifth-grade class studied circuits at just the right time, supplementing the knowledge gained through his experimenting with Snap Circuits. The booklets that come with the toy contain a lot of good information, but nothing my son has taken the time to read. Will he in the future? I hope so. I’m just happy the kit sparks his curiosity now and again.