K’nex is a very popular creative building set that I’ve seen around for a few years now. William loves building, but at 4 he gets a bit frustrated with fiddly pieces. When I found out that K’nex do a junior version, called Kid Kn’ex, we were both excited! Kid K’nex are aimed at ages 3+ and come with larger pieces that smaller hands can play with and simpler, but still very imaginative designs. He’s been loving creating his own colourful monsters and naming them.
We were sent the Budding Builders and Safari Mates set to get hands on with and share our thoughts. The Budding Builders set is the perfect set to start with as it comes with 100 pieces, giving you a wide range of options (a whopping 50 different ideas). It comes with a leaflet that goes through some of the creations you can build, or you can just let your imagination run wild. Whilst they give you the pieces to build creatures, such as eyes, ears, feet, wings and more, kids can also just build structures or whatever they want. William doesn’t like following a guide or being told what to do, but that’s okay.
The Safari Mates set is one of the smaller sets that come with 21 pieces, and again, an instructions leaflet detailing what creatures you can create with it. These sets would be great as an addon, a smaller gift, or for something portable when you didn’t want hundreds of pieces around, like on holiday.
These are both sets that will grow with the child – you can buy them for a three year old and they’ll create simple designs, but as they grow older, they’ll be able to create more and more elaborate creatures.
I really love these two sets, and importantly, so does William. They keep him entertained and engaged for an hour at a time (quite a feat with a four year old) and I can see them increasing his hand-eye co-ordination, as well as his imagination. When he gets older I’ll definitely be introducing him to the more complicated sets too.
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