MindWare KEVA Brainbuilders - 3D brain building STEM challenges for boys & girls - Try to build the image - Practice spatial thinking - 20 planks & 30 puzzles

Very good for my wife to use for her cognitive skills rehab

As described and lots of learning fun!

Fun for kids who love to build and solve challenges! I did think they would be bigger though

My 10 and 8 year old boys love these!

I am a 3rd grade teacher and was looking for STEAM activities for my early finishers and as enrichment for all of my students. While small, this set is amazing. As an adult I was immediately taken by it and so were my students. It really encourages problem solving, spatial thinking, and hands-on learning. The cards do get progressively harder but the three views (side, top, front) and the technical drawings make this something students can struggle productively with. Productive struggle is such an important concept in classrooms; one that we often do not allow enough room for. Students need to struggle (productively) and make mistakes in order to grow. I can totally see this KEVA Brain Builder become one of my most popular games/activities in my classroom this year.

I bought these for my Kindergarten class and, despite reading the product description, was a little surprised at the simplicity of these at first. I initially purchased them because I have a class full of super creative 5 and 6 year olds who are obsessed with building and love any kind of "think outside the box" type of challenge. I greatly prefer to invest in open-ended materials that encourage exploration and creativity instead of more limiting toys that are forgotten once they've "finished". Still, I wasn't sure it would hold the kids' attention enough to be a favorite. I introduced them pretty simply by explaining the premise and telling them that they could try some of the challenges on the cards or make their own creations. I should have known not to underestimate my little guys and girls because they really do love these. They allow for creative thinking and planning, provide varying levels of difficulty, are challenging enough to hold interest without being impossible, and encourage children to keep trying even if it doesn't work the first time - something that can be really difficult for my students' age group. Some prefer to just build and balance with them, while others are absolutely determined to complete all of the cards. I have one future engineer who asked for my help with one of the expert cards and was so excited that we managed to do it, he politely asked for no help on the next one and very carefully did a different one on his own (pretty tough, required several attempts, but doable). When he finally did it, he said "This card says expert so I'm an expert now, right?". Would definitely look into buying more of these sets in the future.

These are a great challenge for my 7, almost 8 year old. They are clever and the many cards give her many challenges to figure out. The fun part is that, if the kids don't "cheat" they don't know what they are building making the challenges harder. By looking at the answer, the kids will not find this very engaging or fun. But she sincerely tries to figure them out and each one takes several minutes. It is fun to watch her try to figure out what the item is she is building along the way. The reason I didn't give it more stars is that the planks are super light and thin. Trying to build some of the items is very hard as the support layers topple easily over, giving way to frustration. If the planks were built a bit wider and they were heavier this would be a 5 star!

These are great! My almost 6 year old absolutely loved these, and they were tons of fun to figure out together (he could do about 80% alone, but needed some help along the way on a few of them). I had guessed it was much bigger than it was, but I'm not upset because it comes in a great little pouch and is perfect for travel. I wish there were an expansion pack, though; he was so absorbed by these that he figured out all 30 figures within a week. Overall, a great toy and very creative.