K&rsquo;NEX Education  STEM Explorations: Swing Ride Building Set  486 Pieces  Ages 8+ Engineering Education Toy 486 COLORFUL PIECES  The KNEX Education STEM Explorations: Swing Ride Building Set includes 486 different brightly colored parts. Pieces include gears, variously sized connectors, and multiple styles of rods: short, long, straight and curved. These parts can be attached together to build simple structures or elaborate constructions, enhancing childrens imaginations and turning their ideas into working creations. STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS  Kids can create a fully functional swing ride with this construction set. The package comes with a battery-powered motor that works on two AA batteries, bringing kids ideas to life. Aside from the swing, they can also build two other amusement park ride models with this toy set  a boom ride and a Ferris wheel. Let middle-school students learn as they have fun with this KNEX Education building set. EXPERIMENT GUIDE  The three included experiments contain complete details on conducting the hands-on, inquiry-based engineering projects based around the models and include information about the different parts and pieces. Parents can assist their children in the beginning until kids get the hang of it. PROMOTES TEAMWORK  Specially designed for children ages 8 and up, this engineering set is more fun when constructed with friends. Students in grades 59 can create the models alone or with two other classmates. Through teamwork, students will learn how mass affects speed, how to gear up and gear down, and much more! The set promotes camaraderie and the development of social skills, too. STEAMagination : Its the connection of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts & math) with a childs natural curiosity and creativity and it powers the fun of each and every KNEX building set. Building with KNEX puts children on a path towards a fundamental understanding of STEAM/STEM subjects. LESSON PLANS AND EXPERIMENTS: All KNEX Education sets come with either a comprehensive guide for teachers or an experiment guide for student-led learning. All lesson plans and experiment guides are written by expert educators and feature hands-on, inquiry-based projects that engage students in todays busy classroom. ALIGNED TO NATIONAL STANDARDS: KNEX Education teacher guides and experiment guides are aligned to national educational standards, including ITEEA, NSES, NCTM, NGSS and Common Core. REAL WORLD LEARNING: Study after study reveals that students have more success learning STEM subjects through activities related to the real world rather than reading about abstract concepts in textbooks. KNEX Education sets allow students to build replicas of real-world machines and contraptions and through the lesson plans and experiments, gain a concrete understanding of the principles that make them work.