I went to Fry’s last week and bought a Tamiya Remote Controlled Insect kitset for my 6 year-old son. We built half of it the night I got home and the other half the following morning. Total time needed was about an hour, allowing for the six year old to cut out the plastic pieces with a pair of sidecutters, push the plastic connectors in, get the hang of “righty tighty, lefty loosey”, learn what a “pinion” is, squirt the silicone grease, etc. The only thing he didn’t do was trim the rough bits of plastic off the pieces with a craft knife (I did that), connect the tricky pins between the legs (a lot of precise connections that nearly baffled me), and read the instructions. It was the perfect kit for my son, who has constantly thought of me as a failure for my inexcusable inability to build a robot with him. Now we have done so, he’s unflipped my bozo bit and will again listen to what I say as though, perhaps, there’s a chance I may have a functioning synapse left in the echo chamber that passes for my brain. My 4 year old girl, who has never shown an interest in the kits we’ve built before, helped build it and has played with it every day since it was assembled. I wholeheartedly recommend the kit for anyone looking to prepare their 5-ish child for MAKE magazine.
