What makes a STEM toy different?
The biggest difference between a STEM toy and an ordinary one is that there's no fixed way to play and no fixed outcome. Which is exactly why a child never tires of it — and quietly picks up an engineer's way of thinking.
A few years ago, through getting to know the head of a toy-education association, we came across "STEM toys" properly for the first time. Back then, hardly anyone in Taiwan had heard of the idea.
The difference: no fixed way to play
Put simply, the biggest difference between a STEM toy and an ordinary one comes down to two things: there's no fixed way to play, and no fixed outcome.
Take a marble-run toy. With so many different mechanical parts to combine, a child can almost never build the exact same track twice.
Our own son happened to be the right age for these toys, so we started him on them at around two. Watching him over the two years since, we've come to appreciate just how powerful STEM toys are.
First: he never gets bored
The thing we noticed most is that he never gets bored of them.
Because the result is different every time, he's been playing with the same marble-run set for two years and still loves it. When we're busy, he'll often settle in on his own, quietly absorbed in his world of tracks.
Second: it forces a child to think
The second thing is that it makes a child think for themselves.
Every engineer knows the loop: test, improve, test again, improve again. A STEM toy lets a child live through exactly that cycle — which is why his tracks keep getting bigger and more elaborate, and why he's even started using his imagination to change how the toy is "supposed" to be played.
A good toy deserves to be seen
Honestly, sitting on a shelf, these toys always lose the battle for a child's attention to the branded, cartoon-character toys — the PAW Patrols and the Robocars of the world.
But once a child actually gets their hands on one, more often than not you can't drag them away.
That's why we care so much about helping more parents recognise what a genuinely good toy looks like. Choose the right one, and a toy can become the best learning material your child has.