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Review: Fishertechnik Advance Universal 4 with Engineer

Every kid loves to build things and our daughter is no exception. We have had LEGOs, ThinkPlay, Plus-Plus and now we have Fishertechnik Advance Universal 4 with Engineer. This particular kit came with our 2nd grade Timberdoodle curriculum. This Fishertechnik set has 40 different models to work those fine motor skills. The instruction manual is all done in pictures so if you or your child has done LEGOs before then it will make perfect sense. However, in Fishertechnik’s manual there are some pictures of pieces you need to have to put these pieces together before attaching them to the main build. It does not however show you which pieces you need so you have to figure that part out on your own. We were looking for pieces for a long time before I realized that it was two pieces put together and we needed to find both pieces. Quite annoying. 


Another downside to this kit is that the pieces are a bit hard to put on and take off for our daughter who is 5. She did eventually get the hang of the ThinkPlay pieces which I also found very hard to attach and remove. The Fishertechnik pieces are mainly 4 colors: grey, black, red and yellow. Which makes it quite difficult to find pieces that are very similar to other pieces when they are the same color. And if you do not find the exact piece then the other pieces will not fit together properly. This can be quite frustrating. Our daughter loves to build things and she is quite good at it. However, this kit proves exception.


Both our daughter and I like other building kits a lot better than Fishertechnik. While building one of the 40 models we realized that two of the pieces were missing from our kit. So, I will be contacting the Fishertechnik company and see if they will send up the pieces that were not out in our kit. Really the only positive about this kit that I have found is that the student can work on some fine motor skills. Other than that we did not like this kit. It would be a lot more enjoyable if the pieces had more of a variety of colors to make finding the pieces easier. We also wish the pieces were easier to put together. 



I would recommend other building kits like Plus-Plus, ThinkPlay, LEGOs, etc. With how much we did not like this kit we will probably not keep it and if we do we will not be using it very often if at all. The Robotis Play 600 Pets kit was a lot better than this. The pieces were easy to find and a lot easier to put together and take apart since it came with a tool to remove pieces. Any of these other building kits I have mentioned would be amazing to add to your collection of fun things for kids. Our next 2nd grade curriculum review has these clues:

     1. Arts and Crafts
     2. Easy to do without any help
     3. Creativity



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Comments

  1. Karla CookSeptember 21, 2021 at 5:29 AM

    I wonder if your daughter would enjoy it more in a couple of years? I know it's recommended for ages 7 and up, so it might be one of those things that she's just not quite ready for since she is such a young 2nd grader. Often kids can be advanced in academics but right on target for motor skills or something like that. Just a thought!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OneLuckeyWifeSeptember 21, 2021 at 3:10 PM

      She able to build them. It’s just sometimes the pieces are a bit difficult to put together.

      Delete

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