so DD2 adored her internal combustion engine. any ideas for Christmas

[MsIngaFewmarbles]

DD2 is 9 and wants to be an engineer. She got meccano last Christmas and loved it and recently had the Haynes engine for her birthday. Built it in 2 hours one afternoon She said she wants an iPod touch but tb I think it's just because her sister wants one. Any ideas?

A really decent glass triangular prism?

Raspberry Pi

What do you actually do with a raspberry pi?

there's the seriously advanced lego - architectural series (Big Ben, Brandenburg Gate)?

or the souped up meccano - the spykee robots.

or what about the logiblocs kits?

Thanks I'll look. Not the spykee though, terrible reviews :(

oh, has it? bugger.

how about a build-your-own-hovercraft?

Raspberry Pi - You can use it as a cheap computer good to learn to programme on. Download scratch on it.

You can use scratch on a PC too.

Lego mindstorm, very expensive though.

any of the teifoc construction sets? see here

A drawing board, A3 paper, set squares, curves, and nice propelling pencils. Hours of entertainment.

Lego mindstorms is great.

An electronics kit - one you can do lots of different things with?

Great ideas thanks :) She's not very into computers and prefers to build things but maybe something she can design with on the pc might be a good idea as well as toys she can actually build.

What about a Stirling engine or a gyroscope?

What about Hot Wires by John Adam? My 2 dd loves this. It's a kit that you can build like an electronic kit to makes things work. That is an alarm sound, a light bulb light up, a propeller move, and lots more. Comes with an instruction book for loads of experiments.

Have you looked in the Science Museum shop? They have the haynes engine you mention, there might be something in there that is the next step up.

www.sciencemuseumshop.co.uk/

Airfix model kit?

No idea but I hope my daughter grows up wanting to to be an engineer too.

Science museum here and the Washington one brilliant. Make your own radio, electronic experiments, we did hovercraft and robots. Weather station.

To extend the science, chemistry set.

If pushing the boat out, a mahmod (sp?) engine.

Highly recommend these electronics kits. Dd thinks her is brilliant and in fact in remembering this I might get her one for older kids now as hers has lasted her around 3 years.

Do you work for logicblocs or something, wishidoneitbetter? You seem to have been raking up an awful lot of old threads with comments about them.