20 Best STEM Toys That Make Science Fun For All Ages

This brings math into the spotlight and delights fans of Netflix's Numberblocks. Helping your preschooler grasp number sense—the intuitive knowledge that two is half of four, for instance—is easier with 100 number cubes. To add, sit Numberblock 2 on top of Numberblock 3 and see if it matches up with Numberblock 5, and so on.

Play with your kid, or let them use the activity cards and wipe-clean boards for math-based puzzles and activities. Parent testers were amazed by how much math their kids absorbed while using this STEM kit. Our favorite companion piece: Numberblocks Blockzee Balance Activity Set (he's kind of a TikTok star). Ages 3+

Kanoodle games are among our favorites for introducing kids to logic puzzles and STEM brainteasers that take some perseverance. This one is a 3D twist on Sudoku; a kid arranges the cubes so no colors repeat in any row or column. It comes with 100 puzzle cards, and one side of the board is a four-by-four grid, the other is a more difficult five-by-five grid. Kids can play solo, or take on challenges with a friend or family member. Kanoodle Ultimate Champion is another popular version, and a previous Best Toy Awards winner. Ages 7+

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Big kids first build the motorized, solar-powered flower petal by petal, then sit it in the sunlight to watch the petals spin, no batteries required. It's made out of 114 pieces and includes four experiment ideas. Ages 8+

I just loved using these with my kids. The 100 pieces can be set up horizontally or vertically or a little of both. Then kids add a crank piece and—tada!—they can make all the gears turn. It's a colorful, mesmerizing early physics lesson. For kids ages 5 and up, there's a more advanced Gears! Gears! Gears! Robots in Motion set. Ages 3+

These foam blocks come in shapes other than your traditional squares and triangles, and magnets keep them together. Because they're made of foam, they can also be used as bath toys. “My kids love mixing the different shapes into robots and bridges, then adding their cars—it’s been so fun," one parent tester said. Ages 3+

"My son created a little world with his imagination and was proud of himself," a tester parent told us of this marble run jungle-themed play set. Kids create their own maze for a marble to roll through but can stop to act out scenarios with the animal characters, too. As Lab pros and parents, we appreciated how pretty this 100-piece set is. You just might leave it sitting out in the living room! Ages 3+

Featuring the voice of Bindi Irwin, this microscope lets kids slip in any of the 60 colorful preloaded slides to learn more than 100 science facts about animals, plants, and humans. It lets them feel like a scientist while they learn encyclopedia facts There's a quiz mode, too. The microscope works in English, Spanish, French or German, and if they like the look and feel of it there's a talking telescope as well. Ages 4+

My youngest learned so much from this set, which has immediate payoff: Kids learn to power a fan, send a helicopter flying up, make a doorbell ring, and more, all through beginning lessons in electricity. Smaller sets include Snap Circuits Flight Deck Science, which won one of our Best Toy Awards. Ages 8+

This game transforms kids into roller coaster engineers. Players design a 3D adventure ride with real loops and drops based on the challenge card they draw. Then, they send the car speeding down and hope for success. The set comes with 40 challenge cards ranging from beginner to expert, and while it's meant to be a single player game, it can also be fun to work in teams to solve the challenges. Ages 6+

Good Housekeeping Institute book testers loved using the instructions and pieces in this kit to make gravity-powered contraptions, like chain-reaction machines, fortune tellers, and labyrinths. Testers also found the directions to be clear. “The visuals in the book were accurate, and it was easy to determine where each piece went,” one said. Ages 8–12

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Combine a marble run with a series of engineering challenges and you get this game. It makes players flex their building, spatial reasoning, and critical thinking muscles to solve the 60 challenges. Or, they can just free play and build cool tracks for the three included marbles. Ages 8+

Budding elementary-age scientists will thrill to the 83 hands-on experiments included here, which are led by the scientists from the Good Housekeeping Institute. The book goes from room to room through a home and explains the scientific concepts behind the phenomena you might find there, like why bathroom mirrors get foggy or what makes sweaty sneakers stink. Ages 7+

Kids can learn about geology and minerals in an extremely hands-on way with this kit, which lets kids break apart 10 colorful geodes and examine the crystals inside. It comes with safety goggles, a magnifying glass and a learning guide so they can really get a good look. Ages 8+

What's more thrilling than running experiments on an egg out of the fridge? This KiwiCo kit introduces kids to the scientific method (observation, hypothesis, data collection, analysis, etc.), teaches kids how to make an egg bounce, and lets them decorate some eggs whether it's Easter season or not.

For preteen and teen engineers looking for more of a challenge, this kit lets kids build a joystick-controlled bionic arm powered by nylon tendons (no electronics, so this is for builders). When they're done, they can try to use it to pick items up off the table. "She loved looking up the parts in the instruction manual and cutting the plastic parts out of the frame," one parent tester said. Ages 10+

Kids as young as 4 can learn screen-free coding and get the critter to do things like fetch or play hide-and-seek. There's also an interactive mode where kids can just play and take care of their pets without coding. This comes with a big and little doggie and won a previous Best Toy Award. Ages 4+

If Ada Twist, Scientist has them all fired up to make their own hypotheses and design their own experiments, this book can help. It'll give them ideas for more than 40 activities, from tracking the phases of the moon to watching decomposition at work. Ages 5+

The Technic line, from LEGO, is full of models with movement, appropriate for tweens and teens interested in mechanics. Your kid builds this set out of 632 pieces, then can mimic a launch. There's also a larger space-themed set we like, the LEGO Technic NASA Mars Rover Perseverance. 9+