Learning Resources Gears! Gears! Gears! Space Explorers Building Set, Space Toys for Kids, Ages 4+

I am so pleased with this version of Spirograph. It has the added excitement of light and movement. My grandson already enjoyed making beautiful artwork with his basic beginner set, and this new one is great, he's almost 8 years old and loves it.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I gave this to my grandson for Christmas. It was an add on to the first set I had purchased him. This was his favorite toy and I know he will have many happy hours playing with it.

My students loved this! It does take some time to put together, but once it's together all of my students loved turning the gears and using the astronauts and rocket ship to travel through space.

This is our first Gears!Gears!Gears! set and my son loves it. His friends like to play it too. This set is really well made and after using this set for a few weeks we will definitely be buying other sets. The set is vibrant in colors and my son gets to be creative in setting the gears in different patterns.

I have tried this gear set with kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students. Each age group as been able to independently discover how the pieces work together, create all different types of structures with the gears, and work together to problem solve when they need to make adjustments to their creations. There were cheers and smiles all around when I showed each class the set and let them explore. The students are loving this gear set. The additional pieces of the planets, space ship, and astronauts was very engaging to all the age groups listed above. One of the things I like best about this set is that it provides the students a chance to work together and problem solve to improve their creations. I also love that because there are so many different ways the pieces can work together, the students get the opportunity to practice the skills of creating, celebrating when their creation works, and then take apart what they made to try something new. The directions that come with this kit are particularly helpful because of the colorful step by step pictures that guide students through creating the image on the front of the box. I do wish that the product came with more building pieces like the 100 pieces gear sets so that the students could have more opportunity to expand their building ideas.

(Received this product as part of an incentivized review program) The packaging was very easy to open and is also great for storing the pieces when not in use. Once opened the pieces are very intuitive. 2we didn't look at the instructions much, we just played. There are sticker sheets to put some planet images on a few pieces which my kid enjoyed a lot. Once that was done she just played around, trying out different combinations and experimenting to see what worked and what didn't. I enjoyed watching her problem solve. I also enjoyed playing with the pieces and changing the set-up. I would recommend to your Little engineer.

Gears, Gears, Gears! Space Explorer Set was very collaborative and educational for my students. Just adding the element of space allowed them to be more creative and think about how space works which enriched their designs. They all collaborated and problem solved while they were working with these gears.

My 6-year-old boys enjoyed this toy, and it proved to be a bit of a challenge for them. Once they took everything out of the box, they were very excited and it was a mad scramble to get stickers on everything. I looked for a "key" as to which sticker went on which gear (some like the sun and larger planets were obvious). In the end we apparently put a couple of the smaller round stickers on the wrong style gear and confused my kids during the assembly process. One of my kids is pretty good at following step by step instructions. He tried hard to follow the gears instruction sheet to get it all assembled as shown. At first he was frustrated, but kept trying--if the gears weren't assembled the proper way, the crank wouldn't move everything at the same time. So it was good to see trial and error and his problem solving skills in action as he tried different combinations and finally got the gears to rotate properly. The only real assembly problem we had was that the space shuttle tower kept giving us issues and toppling over as my son cranked the gears. I finally figured out it needed a much harder "click" into place than what my son was able to do. After that it was fine. My only suggestion is that it would be a nice bonus if there had been an included sheet with some facts about space, planets, etc. to carry the toy's space theme forward. I received this product as part of an incentivized review program.

We shared this toy with our grandsons - 5 years, 2 years, and 1 year. While the two little ones were not of the recommended age, we watched them very closely since there are small pieces that could be put into their mouths! That said, they loved getting to model what the 5 year old was doing and tried to imitate the way he put the pieces together. I like that the box can be reused for storage when not in use and also liked that there are so many pieces for little hands that all 3 could participate in free-play and kind of do their own thing. The 5 year old needed some help with the picture directions but that was fine by me because it allowed us to engage in play and creativity. I highly recommend these - they work well with the other Gears, Gears, Gears set that we have which also allowed for decreased arguing when it came to sharing. ;)

we looked for the instructions on where to put certain stickers and could not find. we thought that the "planet" stickers needed to be put onto certain gears, but they do not. other that that it's fun and the little space men in the space ships bring on another level of imagination to the child. We also like that you can interchange the pieces with the order Gears Gears models