Holiday gift idea: K’Nex Sesame Street Building Sets

Building is not just for older kids, especially when it involves some favorite characters.  The K’NEX Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection brings in Sesame Street friends, including Elmo, Cookie Monster and Ernie, and encourages the little ones (ages 2 – 5) to build their own neighborhood and play with the characters that they love.  This collection is available in four different sets which can be put together and build a neighborhood, or play with individually.

The K’Nex Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection: Elmo’s Ice Cream Truck is an 18-piece set that includes a buildable Elmo dressed as an ice cream man in his white uniform and cap, and his ice cream truck!  The set also includes wheels so that the vehicle built can easily be pushed around and played with.  It also pairs perfectly with the K’Nex Sesame Street Town Collection: Brownstone, a 40 piece set ready to build the famous 1-2-3 Brownstone seen on Sesame Street for 40 years.  Complete with a tiny stoop, Elmo, Cookie Monster, trees and a fire hydrant, kids will love recreating what they’ve seen on TV.  The K’Nex Sesame Street Town Collection: Police Station is a 40 piece set with Officer Ernie reporting for duty.  It includes a buildable Elmo and Ernie, a stop sign and traffic light and pairs perfectly with the K’Nex Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection: Elmo’s Police Car, a 19 piece set with a buildable Elmo dressed in his blue uniform and police cap, along with his police car.

Team Mom was nice enough to send one of these Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection Building Sets for my 3 year old daughter to try out and I am glad to say that she loved it.  She sat and played independently for about an hour, building all different versions of Elmo on his police car.  Some great things that my 3 year old loved about the set

• All of the parts were big and chunky making it really easy for her still small hands to move and manipulate what she was building.
• There were a lot of parts to the set, letting her build and rebuild over and over again, seeing all of the different things that she was able to put together.
• She was able to use her imagination and play with her good friend Elmo.

Some great things that I loved about the set

• The pieces were big enough that they didn’t get lost (or eaten by our dog…)
• The set came with a Play & Learn activity sheet that showed all different designs and activities that I could use to teach my daughter fun facts about the building set.
• It’s a great tool to learn to go over shapes, colors and counting.

For my 7 year old who is “too old” for Sesame Street toys, Team Mom and K’Nex were nice enough to send us the Knex Value Tub 400 pieces.  When I saw this giant bucket of K’Nex, my first thought was that it was a fantastic value.  It came with a booklet filled with ideas to build 20 different models and with lots of parts so that my son was able to spend a lot of time imagining and building without getting tired of it and opting to watch TV.  One thing that he loved was that once he built his model, it was able to move – there were wheels on the cars, propellers for airplanes and spin on the ferris wheel.  I loved the storage tub because it made cleaning up all of the pieces so simple that even my son was able to do it on his own (big bonus moms!), plus it was easy to carry so he was able to bring everything with him when he slept at Grandma’s house the next day.  I loved that it kept him busy and he was enjoying using his imagination.  See pictures below and remember that for a good amount of time, both kids were so entrenched in their building that it was quiet in my house, something that we don’t come by too often.

The sets aren’t expensive and here are some links and photos if you want to order them online at Toys R Us–

• K’Nex Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection: Elmo’s Ice Cream Truck ($9.99)
• K’Nex Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection: Elmo’s Police Car ($9.99)
• K’Nex Sesame Street Town Collection: Brownstone ($20.99)
• K’Nex Sesame Street Town Collection: Police Station ($20.99)
• Knex Value Tub 400 pieces (on SALE for $14.00 at Amazon.com, regularly $24.99)

Now, you can win $1,000 worth of K’Nex Building Sets and be featured on the KNEX.com website.  How? All you have to do is make a video that shows your child’s K’Nex building skills and features your own child building with select K/Nex products.  Be creative, use your imagination, construct your own story – as long as the video features building with K’Nex, the possibilities are endless!  The 10 best videos will be featured on KNEX.com and one winning video will receive $1,000 worth of K’Nex toys.  This sweepstakes runs through December 7th, 2009, so get going on your entry!  See all rules here – good luck!!

Disclaimer: While Team Mom and K’nex provided me with the building sets, all opinions in this review are my own.