With an excellent array of interesting STEM projects, accessible and clear instructions, video and text-based online learning options and a relatively affordable price, if you’re looking for hands-on science kits that will entertain as well as inform, Creation Crate just might be what you’re looking for.
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What is Creation Crate
Founded in 2016, Creation Crate is a Canadian-based provider of STEM educational kits and subscriptions that offer a hands-on approach to helping kids explore the world of electronics and science.
The company provides a series of electronics kits that contain a variety of highly engaging, Arduino-based projects and compliments these with in-depth online lessons and tutorials. In recent years, Creation Crate has recently begun expanding into broader science subjects, such as in chemistry and engineering..
Ages
Officially, Creation crate is designed for students aged 10+, although this varies from course to course.
The company states that they believe younger kids can do most of the experiments with parental supervision, but realistically, we would recommend this to kids over 10 as some kits involve small parts and ample problem solving opportunities, which may frustrate younger learners.
Creation Crate does have some kits for younger learners (8+) , called Creation Crate Jr, that introduce them to the basics of electronics and engineering, such as building a voice recorder or a lever-crane, but you should note they are not part of a subscription box subscription and are individually purchased kits.
How Creation Crate Works
Creation Crate is primarily a STEM subscription box provider that covers several subjects, or courses. There are also single-box projects that can be purchased on the company website, such as the Challenge/Electronics Expansion kit and various Junior kits for younger students.
In general, however, users sign up for a subscription and each month receive a box in the mail containing everything they need to complete a project (or in the case of Chemistry, an experiment).
Unlike other STEM kits out there, however, Creation Crate kits are designed to interact with the company’s online courses (hosted on their website).
Once they’ve received their kid, parents and kids can sign up to each course’s lessons and receive a fairly comprehensive and multimedia walk through of the project’s set up and, perhaps more importantly, a thorough exploration of their relevant STEM concepts, which is cool.
Our Look at: Creation Crate’s Electronics for Kids Course
Creation Crate’s original and flagship course is its Electronics course, which offers 18 projects that allow kids to learn to wire up and program their very own pretty cool devices.
These projects are pretty diverse, but all largely involve working with an Arduino breadboard and installing various electronics components, such as wires, sensors, LED lights and more.
In addition to assembling the electronics, kids also get some experience in programming the Arduino microcontroller in C++, an extremely useful, sometimes tricky, coding language.
Each box in Creation Crate’s electronics course includes a variety of electronics centered around an Arduino microcontroller (like a very small computer built onto a small board) as well as project specific electronics.
Each month’s box comes with its own programmable Arduino microcontroller (UNO R3 at time of writing), so you can keep your projects intact every month.
What other parts you get depends mainly on the project involved – one box may contain wires, LEDs and buzzers, while another may contain photoresistors, buttons, or even an ultrasonic sensor for example.
Overall, however, the company does an excellent job at including everything a project needs, so there is no need to run out an buy anything.
You’ll also get a special card that will give you access to an online course, or series of lessons and tutorials, for that project.
Creation Crate Electronics Projects – What Are They Like?
Creation Crate’s Electronics course actually has some pretty cool projects that go way beyond the old crystal radio sets of the 1980s-2000s.
They offer 18 progressively challenging projects as of writing – starting with relatively simple circuit board projects, such as creating a dice game or mood lamp, as time goes on and they gain experience and knowledge, kids eventually build and code some pretty cool and complex devices, such as infrared security systems, laser tripwires, audio visualizers, wireless control systems and more.
Generally speaking, these are very cool activities and should keep your child’s interest for some time if they have even a slight interest in electronic gadgets.
If you’ve ever had to build a clock out of a potato you might be really impressed by some of the things that can be built, such as the programmable mood lamp in the video below.
Arduino sets are largely coded in C++ and Creation Crate is no different.
Once assembled, projects are hooked up to a computer through a USB cable and students can begin telling them what to do.
From the online classroom students can then access the Arduino Create Platform with each projects files pre-loaded, so there’s no need to download any additional software and kids can get started coding right on the web before uploading the code onto their project’s UNO.
As with any proper coding project, Creation Crate has left a variety of comments in each project’s code explaining to students (and parents, perhaps) what each part of the code is designed to do.
C++ is notorious for its steep learning curve but the company provides fairly clear step by step text and video instructions on what code you need to enter in the online classroom, making it all easy enough to get through.
In the worst case, students can even copy paste the code and explore/modify it later should they so choose.
We really liked the fact that Creation Crate integrates coding into its projects, even if they do provide a good deal of it in the instructions.
C++ is an important coding language and it’s very popular with physical devices, operating systems, game development so we feel giving kids any kind exposure to it is a plus.
Overall, we think that Creation Crate kits are very well put together. The kits themselves are compact yet contain all the parts necessary to create some fairly interesting projects and the components seem very solid and can be quite interesting at times (Ultrasonic Sensors, Accelerometers, and Laser Modules being just some parts that caught our eye).
The basis of their electronics kit is an Arduino microcontroller (the well-regarded UNO R3), a pretty powerful, highly flexible and reliable core, and a solid accompanying breadboard (a sort of plug-in circuit board used for testing and experimenting).
Interestingly, because kids use these Arduino breadboards to wire things up, rather than proprietary or soldered parts, kids can always come back later and modify them with more components or re-program them to their liking, meaning that Creation Crate’s projects can potentially provide a lot of entertainment and learning quite some time.
Interestingly, Creation Crate does offer an optional soldering kit, which is a good idea if you want to keep projects more permanently, although you run the risk of soldering things incorrectly and having to start over when things don’t work (and/or minor burns).
The company states that these projects can be done by younger kids with the help of their parents but oftentimes they involve very small, finicky parts and tasks like making sure LEDs and other components are properly aligned (the positive and negative sides are in the right areas), which can be a bit frustrating for younger kids.
Similarly, while the instructions provide helpful diagrams, we believe these kits would be simply too much for most younger kids even with parental supervision and for the price it would be best just to wait a little bit until they are older.
That said, parents and students who may not have a lot of experience in electronics have the option of accessing step by step instructions in the company’s online classroom, which can make things a lot easier and clearer (which we will discuss below), as well as providing a richer educational experience with in-depth lessons on relevant science topics.
What Are the Online Lessons Like?
Aside from the printed instructions included in each kit, Creation Crate offers subscribers access to its online curriculum and courses, which are available on the company’s online classroom (accessible on the website).
In addition to helping kids assemble their projects via step by step visual tutorials, these lessons provide more structure to the projects, providing important educational background and topical explanations that we think really help enhance and deepen the learning that kids receive from each project.
The lessons cover both the project and the STEM concepts behind them and divide the content up into various, short sections, which we think helps keep kids from getting too bored or intimidated by the material.
By and large, Creation Crate lessons are a mixture of text and video. The text lessons provide an ample amount of colorful diagrams and pictures, which can help clarify the main points, help with assembly and demonstrate important concepts.
Beyond text explanations, there is also a good amount of video instruction offered, with the founder of Creation Crate diving into key concepts in electronics and science, providing clear explanations and even using demonstrations with actual components or on a whiteboard.
These video lessons are very clear, highly educational, fun to watch and, perhaps equally importantly, usually kept quite short, with each video only being a couple minutes long.
The company does pack a lot of knowledge and learning into each video and keeping them brief allows students to digest the material easier without becoming overwhelmed.
In addition to the project lessons, the online classroom also offers tutorials, step by step instructions, help for the programming, exercises to reinforce learning, and even a message board where you might post questions.
Overall, we feel the online lessons and help offered by the company in its classroom really enrich the company’s projects.
The text and videos are pretty clear and easy to follow, and the company does good job at providing in-depth learning in an accessible way without compromising on quality.
That said, some of the material can be a little advanced at times and may fly over the heads of some younger students, and may require greater parental involvement.
Other Creation Crate Courses
Following the success of its electronics box, Creation Crate has begun expanding its course selection and the types of projects it offers.
In addition to its pretty cool electronics course, the company has developed a full Chemistry Kit subscription and a Challenge course to go along with and deepen the learning developed in its electronics program.
Electronics Challenger Expansion Course
In addition to their Electronics subscription, Creation Crate also offers an Electronics Challenger course.
These are a selection of more complex and engaging projects (and lessons) that are really designed to upgrade and expand upon the knowledge and skills kids are taught in the company’s Electronics kits, particularly with their understanding of electronics and components, as well as providing additional C++ coding experience, which we like.
There are only a few projects offered as challenges at time of writing, but they are quite interesting and are things that we think kids would love to build (and keep afterwards).
Kids can, for example, build an autonomous robot rover, build a fully functioning and Bluetooth-enabled stereo/boombox, and even build their very own weather station.
Much like the main Electronics kits, these come with everything a student needs to complete them (including an Arduino motherboard), as well as thorough, step by step instructions with plenty of pictures and even videos to help students put things together and better explore more critical concepts.
And, much like Creation Crate’s other Electronics projects, kids can keep and make use of their creations for some time to come.
Creation Crate Chemistry
Branching out a little bit from its well-deserved reputation in electronics and engineering, Creation Crate offers a chemistry subscription set.
Available as either a monthly subscription or as a single, large package, Creation Crate’s Chemistry sets provide everything a student needs to learn chemistry through some pretty classic lab experiments.
Overall, we feel Creation Crate has done a pretty good job at curating their chemistry experiments, picking topics that are not only highly informative but also highly engaging.
As they go through each box, students will see things ignite, change color, dissolve, and even disappear right before their eyes. As a result,
At time of writing, there are 20 boxes available, with each individual box contains about 4 experiments, which makes for quite a bit of chemistry learning. This also allows kids to explore a project a week, which makes the Creation Crate Chemistry boxes easy to integrate into any homeschool schedule.
These kits come with all the equipment needed to conduct them (with the exception of batteries and other small, common household items), including sturdy vials, beakers, trays and even safety glasses, which is nice since parents won’t have to run out and pick up supplies all that often.
As with Creation Crate’s other programs, a chemistry subscription comes with access to an assortment of step-by-step online lessons and instructions that provide a good deal of structure to the learning.
As with Creation Crate’s other lessons, and unlike many other chemistry sets that are content to wow students with some interesting color or state changes, these are fairly in-depth and high quality, exploring important concepts in chemistry, such as reactivity, bonds, exothermic/endothermic reactions, chemical equations and more.
Price
Creation Crate is largely a monthly subscription box service, although for several kits there are options to purchase a complete set all at once, as well as some single projects that can be purchased.
As parents might expect, prices tend to differ based on the contents, subject and complexity of the kits involved, but by and large cost somewhere between $29.99 and $39.99 per month on a monthly basis with some price breaks offered for those subscribing to longer periods.
Overall, Creation Crate is pretty competitive with other STEM kits in terms of price, and actually offers substantially good value in our opinion as, despite not being all that much more expensive, their do include a lot more than many other options out there, such as complete chemistry kits and electronics kits with individual Arduino boards, which usually cost upwards of $20 on their own.
One thing customers should note is that plans auto renew, which we never like, so if you forget to cancel it at the end of your subscription period you may be re-subscribed automatically and charged accordingly.
So, Is Creation Crate Worth the Price?
All in all, we feel Creation Crate is an excellent introduction to electronics for kids and provides excellent value for money, isn’t too hard and the projects can be really, really cool.
Whether purchasing the Chemistry, Electronics or even the Junior kits, the company does a pretty good job at including everything parents and kids will need to put things together, including all components and clear, graphically-illustrative instructions.
Further, the online classroom goes far beyond providing instructions and tutorials for assembly. Creation Crate’s educational material is fairly in-depth as well, explaining many of the important concepts behind each project clearly and in detail.
Bottom Line
With an excellent array of interesting STEM projects, accessible and clear instructions, video and text-based online learning options and a relatively affordable price, if you’re looking for hands-on science kits that will entertain as well as inform, Creation Crate just might be what you’re looking for.
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About the Author
David Belenky is a freelance writer, former science and math tutor and a tech enthusiast. When he’s not writing about educational tech, he likes to chill out with his family and dog at home.