IntelliBricks

Stay Clear Folks!
My son was in their Engineering Summer Camp last year and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Thinking it was the same, I signed him up again this Summer… Wooow Nelly! I made a big mistake!
FIRST PART OF EACH DAY:
What I’ve assessed during this year’s Engineering Camp was that the two different age groups that they had (6 – 8 and 9 – 12) was too wide of a spread to adequately cover the different abilities and aptitudes of each child. This means that if you have a child who is much more advanced for that age group he/​she ends up getting bored out of his mind doing their predetermined tasks during the earlier portion of the program each day.
SOLO TIME:
Later on his own time your child gets to work on something that is interesting for that child. It sounds all good and fun but the problem is this; kids are separated again into smaller groups and IntelliBricks hands out very limited number of needed materials (motors, gears, sensors etc…) In short time, kids begin to bicker about who gets to do what with limited resources allocated to them. On his second day, my son complained that his partner for that day hogged the resources and he ended up simply working with Legos alone without the electrical components. When I relayed this incident to the owner who was present, do you know what she said to me?
«Kids need to learn to share and work with partners!!»
Really?!! My son has three other brothers – he has a black belt in the Art of Sharing. Thank you very much! If I needed a parenting advise I would have sourced it elsewhere. What I wanted was for him to be exposed to the technology so that he can experiment and create!
POLICY! POLICY!
Owner’s unwarranted defensive tone and attitude was completely understandable. I was told earlier by someone that they had issues where kids breaking motors when freely given access. No problem! I won’t send him or other three boys to this camp!
LEGO MINDSTORMS ROBOTICS
Lastly, I’ve decided to invest in the next level of Lego and engineering development for my boys by purchasing Lego Mindstorms EV3 pack. This package will set me back $ 350 from Amazon but with this kit my son can make 5 unique and really cool robots that he can program. And afterwards, he can keep the Legos to build other unique projects on his own. Oh yeah, in my case, he can «SHARE» it with his other brothers!