Skip to main content

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



Labels:

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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

 I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Sensory Tissue Box

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called  Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T
1 comment
Read more

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade.  My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%
Post a Comment
Read more