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Quercetti Kaleido Gears Crank

Kaleido Gears by Quercetti has no motor of any kind – you will need to turn this crank to make them rotate.

This Kaleido Gears set by Quercetti has all the essential things you’d desire in a gear system. Firstly, their construction quality is top-notch, and the pieces have a robust and solid design. The set also has a seamless gear interface, so they interlock securely. With these reliable connections and sturdy pieces, the set allows you to build machines that can perform real work.

The set includes several base plates that fit together like puzzle pieces. Sadly, this set has no poles or pillars, you make a basic construction from the puzzle pieces only. You can also build 3D structures with these pieces, like boxes or buildings. There are also no bands or chains, so this set has fewer building options than the other Quercetti gear sets.

The gears, however, are great – they have different sizes, colors, and ornaments, and they move! Together, they create very bright and flashy crafts, hence the set’s name. It also includes the axis pieces and a crank to move the gears. This set is great for explaining basic physics to the children – they will learn the basics of gear connections without any trouble. Since the kit mostly has big, colorful parts, the recommended age is 3-12 years.

Quercetti Kaleido Gears Crank
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Knexomania Continues – Antilope

A pretty symbolic antilope my son built from K’Nex 522 Piece set all by himself.

K’Nex comes in two sizes: regular and mini K’Nex. There are also matching thick and thin rods, as well as some rods that can connect large and small pieces together. Not all sets include mini parts. K’Nex 522 Piece set, for example, doesn’t.

Just like with any other K’Nex sets, this one has pieces that securely fit together. You can easily take apart your creations and use the pieces to build something else. Regular K’Nex pieces have stronger connections and can handle even very active play. Mini K’Nex creations are a bit more delicate.

While the crafts you make with K’Nex can be quite large, some of the pieces, especially the mini ones, are very small. This makes K’Nex sets unsafe for small babies who might accidentally swallow the pieces. These pieces can also be a bit challenging for younger kids to assemble correctly. That’s why it’s recommended for kids aged 7 and older to use K’Nex sets.

It’s also important to note that most K’Nex sets don’t come with detailed crafting instructions. Some packages may only show completed toys without step-by-step guides. However, K’Nex offers a lot of versatility and possibilities, so this is usually not a major issue.

Knexomania Continues - Antilope
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Michley Waffle Blocks

Waffle blocks like this Michley waffle blocks set, are popular building toys. They are flat and have mathing pegs on their sides. You can assemble these pieces in 2D and 3D shapes, and in different positions.

Pieces of this set have unusually big number of pegs on them – far more than pieces of Gakken and Plus Plus. The pieces have wall patterns, windows and other similar decorations. The basic models the set offers are houses and castles. However, you can build anything else from these interlocking squares and triangles. These triangular pieces are in fact less common in waffle block sets. Gakken sets, for example, severely lack them. On the other hand, this set doesn’t have arches and other similar pieces, which somewhat limits the building possibilities. The houses are the things Michley waffle blocks make best, and, sadly, there are no options for, say, cars with the moving wheels.

This particular set has pieces that are 2 inch wide, so they are safe for small children to play with. These pieces are easy to hold and too big to swallow, so the manufacturer recommends them for kids who are 3 years or older. The pieces also have safe, rounded edges.

Michley Waffle Blocks
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Quercetti Kaleido Gears Piece Connection

This is how the pieces of Kaleido Gears by Quercetti connect to each other. The baseplates have small holes, and the small pieces, like the axis pieces, have the pins on them.

This Kaleido Gears set by Quercetti has all the essential things you’d desire in a gear system. Firstly, their construction quality is top-notch, and the pieces have a robust and solid design. The set also has a seamless gear interface, so they interlock securely. With these reliable connections and sturdy pieces, the set allows you to build machines that can perform real work.

The set includes several base plates that fit together like puzzle pieces. Sadly, this set has no poles or pillars, you make a basic construction from the puzzle pieces only. You can also build 3D structures with these pieces, like boxes or buildings. There are also no bands or chains, so this set has fewer building options than the other Quercetti gear sets.

The gears, however, are great – they have different sizes, colors, and ornaments, and they move! Together, they create very bright and flashy crafts, hence the set’s name. It also includes the axis pieces and a crank to move the gears. This set is great for explaining basic physics to the children – they will learn the basics of gear connections without any trouble. Since the kit mostly has big, colorful parts, the recommended age is 3-12 years.

Quercetti Kaleido Gears Piece Connection
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Quercetti Gears Tower

Here’s a tower with gears, not yet fully decorated. We took a special photo to make it clear what it looks like without the studs. We also bought a Quercetti set with a motor (bottom left, yellow in color with two red buttons), the entire tower rotates, both manually and by motor.

These gears by Quercetti has all the essential thing you’d desire in a gear system. Firstly, their construction quality is top-notch, and the pieces have robust and solid design. The set also has a seamless gear interface, so they interlock securely. With this reliable connections and sturdy pieces, the set allows you to build machines that can perform real work.

The set includes several base plates that fit together like puzzle pieces. Nearly half the time these are in use at our house, kids made colorful boxes from them. So, they’re not just basic pieces but are interesting decorations in their own. The second set of pieces has support structures, which are tubes and joints that interlock to create sturdy poles. These pieces come in a consistent size, without the frustration of dealing with components at slightly different heights, a problem we’ve encountered with other sets in the past. The support connects are sturdy, so that the structures stay intact once they’re built.

In addition to the gears, this set also comes with attachments like chains and rubber bands. You can use them to connect groups of gears that would otherwise be separate. Also, you can use them with other toys and building sets.

Quercetti Gears Tower
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K’Nex Airplane

We purchased K’Nex big building set recently and still haven’t really mastered it. I thought about purchasing it for a very long time. It looked really similar to Lego Technic, and I thought that my son wouldn’t play with it. In the end, we bought 2 complex sets for our 12-year-old son and a simple set for our 5-year-old daughter. The set turned out to be interesting, my daughters liked it.

The K’Nex construction set was invented by Joel Glickman, who, while bored at a party, twirled cocktail straws in his hands and tried to connect them in different ways. This is how he got the idea of the set – flexible sticks and their possible rigid connections. The set first appeared in 1993 in the USA. You can read about the features of the parts on Wikipedia. Since 2001, the manufacturer added the Lego-type parts in the construction set for greater variability in designs, especially with space themes. This was connected to the release by Lego of the Star Wars series. You can check the entire variety of K’Nex for children aged 2 years and older on the K’Nex website.

We made this craft from K’Nex pieces of regular size, because K’Nex big building set don’t have mini pieces. All mini pieces we have come from other sets.

K'Nex Airplane
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Quercetti Kaleido Gears Piece Types

These are different types of pieces Kaleido Gears pieces by Querccetti has. Of course, there are many pieces – the picture just shows the piece variety.

This Kaleido Gears set by Quercetti has all the essential things you’d desire in a gear system. Firstly, their construction quality is top-notch, and the pieces have a robust and solid design. The set also has a seamless gear interface, so they interlock securely. With these reliable connections and sturdy pieces, the set allows you to build machines that can perform real work.

The set includes several base plates that fit together like puzzle pieces. Sadly, this set has no poles or pillars, you make a basic construction from the puzzle pieces only. You can also build 3D structures with these pieces, like boxes or buildings. There are also no bands or chains, so this set has fewer building options than the other Quercetti gear sets.

The gears, however, are great – they have different sizes, colors, and ornaments, and they move! Together, they create very bright and flashy crafts, hence the set’s name. It also includes the axis pieces and a crank to move the gears. This set is great for explaining basic physics to the children – they will learn the basics of gear connections without any trouble. Since the kit mostly has big, colorful parts, the recommended age is 3-12 years.

Quercetti Kaleido Gears Piece Types