STEM AT HOME: GRAVITRAX FROM RAVENSBURGER [#TESTDRIVETUESDAY]
It’s not very often that an educational toy comes along that looks as intriguing as Gravitrax. This week, we were sent quite a bit of it to play with – and so as it wasn’t a pretty or fluffy toy, I had to step aside and let Gav enjoy it with the boys. Here’s what they thought.
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GraviTrax Starter Set
GraviTrax is the all-new STEM track system from Ravensburger – maker of our favourite jigsaw puzzles! With Gravitrax, Jensen and Lyoto have been challenged to use their imagination to build action-packed tracks and set some gravity spheres on the loose!
Jensen LOVES science. There isn’t a great amount of hands-on learning when it comes to science at school and so kits like these are perfect for learning at home. He loves his Hot Wires set and so I knew he would get stuck into learning about gravity in no time at all. Lyoto is still 6 but he’s keen to join in – and why not?
Gravitrax is ideal for learning about gravity, magnetism, kinetic energy whilst having fun. By designing their own tracks [or using the tasks and blueprints included to help] a problem-solving passion is ignited and they’re free to explore and experiment, and build the connections in their brain that only come from independent learning.
The starter set comes with over 120 pieces – everything you need to get started right away!
GraviTrax Building Expansion
Once you have a starter kit, you can then extend your GraviTrax collection!
The Building Expansion pack includes over 25 parts, including bases and levels to experiment with. The kit includes 2 Base Plates, 1 Transparent Level, 8 Large Height Tiles, 4 Small Height Tiles, 2 Switches, 1 3-in-1 tile, 1 Vortex, 1 Finish Line, 4 Basic Tiles, inserts for basic tiles: 2 Catchers, 1 Freefall, 1 Splash, 1 Landing.
GraviTrax Magnetic Cannon Expansion
You can also boost your GraviTrax set with the GraviTrax Magnetic Cannon! It gives the gravity spheres a major boost in speed! This is brilliant if you need to go uphill.
Add some speed to your GraviTrax with the Hammer Expansion. If your gravity spheres are decelerating, this hammer will launch the spheres through your track with some much-needed velocity.
The set contains one cannon and 3 spheres.
GraviTrax Hammer Expansion
The GraviTrax Hammer also adds some much-needed velocity to your layout! When the gravity spheres have slowed to a crawl, you can use this Hammer to whack the spheres, propelling them on to complete the circuit!
The Hammer set contains 1x Hammer Tile, 1x Long Track, 2x Medium Tracks, and 3x Short Tracks
The boys had great fun [and so did Gav] putting the different tracks together as shown in the booklet. Sometimes they worked, and that was brilliant – and sometimes they didn’t. I thought this would lead them to decide it wasn’t worth playing with, and become bored within minutes, but instead each time it didn’t work, they were keen to amend the track and use their best problem-solving skills naturally without me or Gav having to prompt them. It’s hard to stop playing once you’ve started!
We’d describe Gravitrax as a much more complicated and more fun version of marble run – putting the tiles together so that the steel balls would career around the track involves some serious brain power and concentration – and so does following some of the more complicated puzzles in the booklet. The boys, however, seem extremely content to create their own Gravitrax tracks and see how they can keep the little balls in motion. It’s perfect for a rainy day [which we had one of this week at last!] and sits proudly on the toy shelves with Hot Wires as part of Jensen’s growing science collection. It’s definitely a toy which will be added to – they’ve already been on the internet, calculating which parts would give more power to their little set-ups – hammers, catapults… There’s a lot of pocket money maths going on here!
We received Gravitrax in return for a review. Our thoughts and opinions are our own.
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