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Last year, in an effort to make sense of the overwhelming crush of products at New York's annual Toy Fair ("the largest international toy trade show in the Western Hemisphere"), I decided to focus on toys that I thought could stimulate an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills in girls. I even went so far as to bestow an imaginary award upon my favorites: The STEMmy.
Striving for a Bechdel Test level of simplicity, I just asked of everything that I looked at:
- Will this toy promote STEM skill development?
- Can a girl still feel and act like a girl while playing with this toy?
- What does the advertising for the company look like? Are girls represented equally? Adequately?
As I'd previously stated in my GeekMom post STEM Careers Might Be the Best Thing for Our Daughters--But There are Challenges, "STEM jobs are among the most stable and profitable in the current economy." And yet, women have not been entering these more-profitable STEM careers in proportionate numbers--why? Is it the GPA-lowering freshman-year math-science death march? Is it (as author-educator Rachel Simmons posits) a middle-school psychological glass ceiling? Or, I wondered, does the STEM door shut even earlier on girls?
According to a 2010 report completed for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math,” 15-year-old girls in most countries outperform boys in science -- but not in the United States. Christianne Corbett, a co-author of the 2010 report, felt that this phenomenon was cultural, actually stating: “We see that very early in childhood — around age 4 — gender roles in occupations appear to be formed.”
This meshes with questions I asked when I first looked at the Goldieblox toy at Maker Faire last fall:
That's the question I continue to ask myself: How much do the toys we give our children shape who they become?
Don't get me wrong: I don't for a second believe that toy selection will turn kids into something they are not -- but I suspect that toys (in combination with books, movies, teacher expectations, and family attitudes) do help foster interests that can turn into hobbies that can turn into careers.
With all of this then in mind, I present the 2013 STEMmy Awards...
QUORIDOR (ages 6 and up)
"This is a good game! You will hate me in three moves!" the Gigamic sales rep told the woman standing next to me at Toy Fair. A moment later, his opponent moaning, the rep laughed wickedly: "You see, you see?"
Like most of the Gigamic games I investigated at Toy Fair, Quoridor starts from a deceptively simple objective. In this case, 2 players take turns either moving their pawn across a playing board or placing a wall in the path of their opponent's pawn. Players are forewarned, though: what blocks your opponent on one turn could just as easily block you later in the game.
What I liked: Beautiful wooden board and pieces feel solid and well-made. Game rules are easy to pick up but game play can still be very challenging.
STEMmy bonus points: A great, gender-neutral strategy game for future boardroom members.
KATAMINO (ages 3 and up)
Katamino is the second Gigamic game to make my list and again the premise seems simple: take the recommended block shapes and place them together so that they completely fill the alotted grid space on the board. Start with four shapes and a 16-block grid. Once that is completed, expand your grid space and pick up additional blocks. You must use all of the suggested blocks and you must cover your entire grid.
__What I liked: __Just a minor change in game play -- adding just one more block or one new line of grid space -- increased complexity significantly. Like Quoridor, this is a game that sits beautifully in your hands, inviting you to touch and manipulate.
STEMmy bonus points: A great early game for exploring geometric relationships and fostering spatial understanding.
CRAZY FORTS (ages 5-9)
Connect the Crazy Forts balls and sticks to create the forts and castles of your dreams, then cover with your favorite sheet or blanket and your castle is now an intimate book nook, too. Sure, the building sets come in Barbie pink if that's what you'd prefer, but I'd opt for the glow-in-the-dark construction set and a pack of cool-to-the-touch Fort Lights. What could be more magical than sitting inside a glowing blanket fort and then reaching up to turn your private reading light on, after all?
I played with a set of these under the direction of a sales rep at Toy Fair without any trouble but reviews on Amazon mention the importance of reading the Crazy Forts directions with your kids: there is apparently a right and wrong way to insert the rods into the balls; failing to twist the rods as you insert them will impact structural integrity significantly.
__What I liked: __I am partial to building toys and I am a sucker for anything glow-in-the-dark. Also? Big fan of reading nooks.
STEMmy bonus points: Girl-friendly packaging in a toy that gets kids building and imagining.
SUKUGO (ages 6 and up)
This board-version of the logic game Soduku is meant to be played collaboratively with your kids. A book full of puzzle starters gets the game going: place your 1-9 number tokens in the appropriate spaces on the board and then work together to fill in the empty spaces, remembering that each number can only appear once in each line or grid. A handy covered tray neatly organizes the jewel-toned number tokens as well as the smaller numerical placeholders.
__What I liked: __The board and token tray stow away in a handy zippered carrier, making this a great travel toy.
STEMmy bonus points: Lots of scientific habits of the mind are reinforced through games like Soduku/Sukugo: patience, consistency, logical reasoning, and active prediction, to name a few.
LAQ (ages 6 and up)
Let me be clear: if you have toddlers at home, you will not want any LaQ building sets in the house. The pieces are teeny-tiny: the largest ones are about as big as my thumbnail, the smaller ones half that size. They are charming though, and click together in a simple and very satisfying manner, so if everyone has comfortably moved beyond Freud's oral stage of psychosexual development, I strongly encourage you to take a look at the sheer variety of sets LaQ has to offer: robots, rockets, dinosaurs, cars, bunny ears, carousels, sharks, oh my!
__What I liked: __LaQ sets allow angles in a way that other connecting building block systems do not -- the name is a play on kyuu, the Japanese word for sphere. __
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STEMmy bonus points: While LaQ's "Sweet" and "Imaginal Girls" collections are marketed specifically to girls (flowers, tiaras, pastel carousels), there are also plenty of sets that are gender-neutral, accommodating everyone from the Pink Brigade to tomboys. Additionally: flatter pieces will not hurt nearly as much when you step on them in the middle of the night.
KOONTZ SAFE (by American Educational Products)
I found this safe over at the American Educational Products exhibit, along with a number of other reinforced cardboard construction kits (including a clock and a combination lock). The kits look like a great, relatively inexpensive way to learn about mechanics but you'll have to go old-school when ordering -- looks like the very-wonderful American Educational Products catalog is available for viewing online but to purchase this product, you'll have to call or send an email.
What I liked: You build your own working safe out of reinforced cardboard, learning how safes work in the process. __ __
STEMmy bonus points: Building a safe is the first step in a hacker's lock-picking journey!
BODY JUNIOR(ages 4 & up)
The *Body Junior IQ * game (as well as the equally well-conceived Body IQ and Food Fight games for 4th grade and up) are academic board games, more likely to be found in a classroom than in a home. However, if you're a home schooler or if you have a child that is passionately interested in biology and how the body works, this could be a great toy for them. Throw the dice, follow the blood vessels and ask each other questions in categories including "skin and hair," "brain/nerves," "senses" and "stomach/intestines." Each time you answer a card's question correctly you keep it. Each card is worth a "number of years." At the end of the body tour, add up your years -- the person with the most years wins!
__What I liked: Best. Game board. Ever.
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STEMmy bonus points: Even if you're child doesn't want to grow up to be a doctor or nurse, these games provide a great way to teach kids about how their bodies work.
GENES IN A BOTTLE KIT (8 and up)
Isolate your DNA in the included precipitate, dye it, and then wear the result in a keepsake bottle around your neck. Kit includes: 2 keepsakes, lab ware, and an educational instruction manual for 7 activities as well as 2 full color "I Love Your DNA" temporary tatoos.
__What I liked: Science meets jewelry. What's not to love?
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STEMmy bonus points: Girl-friendliest girl-in-a-lab-coat packaging I've ever seen! Also: the two "inventors" of Bio-Rad's one-step DNA extraction buffer are both female scientists, as well as two of their three R&D scientists in the Biotechnology Explorer program and all three of their product managers!
My dad taught me to play Chess when I was in elementary school. Every night we'd play a couple games, loser setting up the board for the next round. I think that my dad was responsible for setting up the board once, maybe twice, my entire childhood. Bridling under the sheer indignity of all of those losses, some kids might have practiced chess strategy during the day while their dad was at work. Me? I took the set out most afternoons and made up Ivanhoe-styled stories about the pieces.
This may or may not have some bearing on why I was drawn to the Chess: Once a Pawn a Time setfrom Science Wiz, a Chess set sold together with a very clever story book that delves into the inner lives, motivations, and movements of the game's pieces. Whether this is more whimsy than you think is appropriate while learning Chess might correlate directly with how many hours of your childhood were spent crafting backstory for Rooks and Bishops. Sound ridiculous? Yup, the Lego Friends detractors would probably think so, too -- and yet Lego says that in the past year, by adding accessories and backstories to their sets, the number of girls playing with Lego construction sets has tripled...
__What I liked: The new version of this set coming out in March will be released with chess pieces that look just like the anthropomorphized chess pieces in the enclosed story book (and seen on the cover of the board game).
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STEMmy bonus points: It's Chess. With faces and personalities. What was your question?
Addendum: This chess set is released by Science Wiz, the company that also creates the award-winning Science Wiz science kits. Each topic of study (physics, chemistry, energy, DNA, etc.) has its' own "Portal to Discovery" on the Science Wiz website that links to free, high-quality, kid-friendly videos, presentations, games, and activities available on the web. The books and the site are both definitely worth checking out if you're a Geek Parent looking to take a topical deep-dive with your kids!
*What are your thoughts? What toys and companies do you think deserve a STEMmy?
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