Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Geeky Gift For Children?

Everyone's suggesting gifts to teach the next generation of geeks about science, technology, engineering, and math. Slashdot reader theodp writes: In "My Guide to Holiday Gifts," Melinda Gates presents "a STEM gift guide" [which] pales by comparison to Amazon's "STEM picks". Back in 2009, Slashdot discussed science gifts for kids. So, how about a 2016 update?
I've always wanted to ask what geeky gifts Slashdot's readers remember from when they were kids. (And what geeky gifts do you still bitterly wish some enlightened person would've given you?) But more importantly, what modern-day tech toys can best encourage the budding young geeks of today? Leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best geeky gift for children?

Comments

My favourite gifts as a child

[jenningsthecat]

- old tube AM radio to take apart (I was 5 years old and had already been passionate about electricity and electronics for the previous 3 years or so)
- crystal radio kit
- build-it-yourself motor kit (very cool - I had to wind the armature myself)
- countless ignition cells and lantern batteries
- 100-in-1 electronics educational kit
- walkie talkies
- wood burning kit (never did any wood burning 'art' with it, but it was my first soldering iron)

Along with new geek gifts for kids, consider old 'junk' that they can take apart, experiment with, and learn from; it won't cost much, and they won't be worried about breaking some new bit of shiny and pissing off Mom and Dad. And remember that the greatest gifts a parent can give to a geek child are TIME and COMPANIONSHIP. Take them to places that they'll love, but that they wouldn't normally go to or wouldn't discover on their own. When I was a kid my father took me to a local hydro-electric generating station. (I grew up in Niagara Falls Canada). And this was no tourist visit; he had a friend who worked there, and we were up on a narrow, high catwalk above the generators - a place where only employees were supposed to go. I'll remember that 'til the day I die.

The above ideas aren't specific to Christmas - but this is a good time to remind ourselves of the gifts we can and should be giving kids all year to feed their passions and build their confidence.

mindstorm ev3

[Wycliffe]

I agree with the lego bricks and if you want to go one step further, get a mindstorm ev3. Yes, mindstorm is expensive but it beats almost any stem toy on the market. It has a low learning barrier to entry but is still pretty powerful and most importantly is not single use. I have bought my kids quite a few other stem toys like sphero, ozobot, mbot, snap circuits, littlebits, preprogrammed toy robots, etc... but most of them either have limited customization or you have to be a programmer to make them do anything cool. The mindstorm kit was the most expensive stem toy I have ever bought but it is the only one that my kids still play with on a regular basis as the rest are now mostly just collecting dust and collectively all the other dust collecting stem toys cost more than the mindstorm set and the mindstorm can basically replicate the functionality of all of them. The only real problem my kids have with mindstorm is that they can only create one thing at a time and must destroy it before creating something new.