20 Top STEM Gifts for Tweens Aged 10-12 That Spark Innovation

The best STEM gifts for tweens are not only hands-on but engage their curiosity. The Mega Crystal Growing Lab by National Geographic is an excellent example to start with for pre-teens to grow crystals in 6 different colors (red, green, blue, purple, yellow, and glow in the dark!).

It is a great way to inspire your child with a love of science and start a beautiful rock collection. With easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions and two silicone growing chambers, your kids will love growing the crystals and displaying them.

This fun kids’ STEM activity includes four real gemstone specimens, rose quartz, fluorite, blue calcite, and quartz geode, which can help inspire a lifelong love of science and learning.

Your fossils and geology-interested tween will love this rock tumbler kit. With its sound-dampening cover, your pre-teen will watch his collected specimen reveal itself as sparkly quartz or agate.

This tumbling kit has all your tween needs to get started, including one pound of rough rocks, four bags of grit, five jewelry fastenings, a newly designed strainer, and an exclusive gem foam rock polish for a sparkly finish.

A super creative way of combining video games with hands-on learning Nintendo Labo is a new line of interactive play designed to inspire creative minds as well as provide a new way of play.

The Nintendo Labo kits provide the tools and technology to teach the principles of engineering, physics, and basic programming.

By assembling sheets of cardboard into a variety of shapes called Toy-Con, and combining them with Nintendo Switch, you can bring your inventions to life!

Seeking STEM gift ideas for an 11-year-old, we’d suggest looking into the Mindstorms LEGO series. Mindstorms are far more than just building blocks and following instructions; your tween will learn essential skills such as coding as they build a programmable robot and intelligent toys that play ball, drive, shoot missiles, and more that are remotely controlled.

The components within the set can work well with the LEGO BOOST Creative Toolbox, Droid Commander (75253), and many other Lego sets. It is one of the best engineering toys for kids. 

A great choice for introducing STEM concepts with a LEGO mad tween, the LEGO Chain Reactions kit allows kids to design and build machines that move using bricks.

There are extraordinary chains of reaction created by this kit, and kids will not only have a blast but will also learn the physics behind the concepts and put it to use as they master their own inventions.

It includes step-by-step instructions for ten modules, six plastic balls, and paper ramps.

If you’ve got a child still obsessed with dinosaurs well beyond their toddler years, you could well have a future paleontologist on your hands!

A Fossil Kit is a way of introducing scientific concepts to a pre-teen, especially if you have a hands-on learner. The kit is packed with fossils that need to be unearthed. It is a good way of having fun while spending the afternoon exploring dinosaur bones.

The Mega Fossil Mine Dig Kit from National Geographic contains 15 genuine fossils that your tween will love digging up with the included tools of trade: a brush, magnifying grass, and chisel.

All young engineers start somewhere! This gravity-powered logic maze game involves reasoning skills and visual perception.

A single-player game, it has 60 challenges to test your tween’s skills, expanding thinking capacity and skills to counter challenges.

It is an ideal STEM gift for a 9-year-old, with 60 challenges from beginner to expert, a game grid, nine towers, six target pieces, and three marbles.

Classic educational toys like Marble Run never go out of fashion. Younger children through to older tweens and teens will continue to get countless hours of fun from this classic set – made even more exciting with Glow in the Dark elements!

As they play, your pre-teen is able to acquire and develop skills such as planning, spatial reasoning, critical thinking, problem-solving, hand-eye coordination, logical reasoning, and motor skills.

It is one of the best STEM toys for kids of all ages, with five sturdy bases, 45 clear, smooth-run track pieces, 15 exciting action pieces, and six different colors that glow in the dark.

This Molecular Model is designed to ease the study of chemistry while captivating your tween’s interest. It makes the study of chemicals, molecules, or atomic structures fun in 3D visual learning.

It has an eight-page instructional guide and a molecule stencil for drawing structures on paper.

With this hands-on kit, students can learn about the relationship between electricity and magnetism and how switches operate to control the lights in their homes.

Snap Circuits enable kids to assemble electronic circuits on rows and columns grids. They function like a printed circuit board, with each component having a distinct function and identified easily by color.

With this kit that requires no soldering as it is a snap, your tween will get to build over 300 experiments with 60+ parts.

Every curious kid needs their own microscope!

A great option for big kids, this particular microscope features a single coaxial coarse focus knob, a specimen stage with two built-in stage clips, and a nature light and/or LED illumination system. It can use either natural light or built-in LED light.

The microscope kit comes with sample slides, coverslips, plastic tweezers, a plastic scalpel, specimen vials, adjustable lenses, collecting vials, plus a sturdy hard case for easy storage and travel. This set is great for beginner scientists.

Does your child love crafts and science? Then, this innovative STEM Science Lab kit for kids would make a great STEM kit for girls.

The kit includes an illustrated learning guide to enable your tween to follow along. All the ingredients meet the safety standards and can be put in your child’s bath.

It is a complete kit that has all your tween will need to create ten fizzy bath bombs.

Are your tweens soda lovers? If yes, then let us recycle the used-up bottles in a fun way. The 4M water rocket kit uses the power of water pressure to blast its rocket (the bottle) up to 90 feet in the air.

This is one of the best STEM toys for 10 year olds who are interested in rocketry and space flight. (Note, your tween will need a bicycle pump, which is not included in the kit).

With this intricate building set, your tween will learn all about mechanical advantage, gear ratios, rotational speed, gear configurations, and more as they put in place all those fine motor skills

The set includes 140+ parts that your tween can use to build three unique geared models – a crank fan, an egg beater, and a car window. It is a perfect gift for your tween to learn engineering skills.

This coding robot kit is one of the best stem toys for 11 year olds who’d love to learn more about programming, electronics, and robotics in a simple and fun way.

It features interactive software and rich tutorials for your tween to follow. It is a super cool DIY robotic toy for kids that your tween can opt to remote control as it multifunctions.

Kids of all ages will have so much fun getting to grips with this STEM Chemistry Kit with a twist, they get to make delicious treats!

With 18+ hands-on science experiments, your kids will be making sorbets, popsicles, and ice cream with a lab guide, and all the lab tools and equipment they need included.

Ideal for Middle Schoolers learning biology, this is a STEM anatomy set that tweens will love, taking them on a fascinating tour of the human body with 21 realistic vital organs, with bones, muscles, forceps, and tweezers.

It includes nine squishy organs, a 12” clear plastic human body model, a stand, 12 plastic bones and muscles, a body part organizer mat, a 24-page illustrated anatomy book, and an instruction sheet.

The Scientific Explorer is an educational kit that helps your child understand fun facts about the body. It helps them learn how to grow friendly mold and bacteria, create a stinky intestine, slimy snot, and fake blood.

This kit includes four cotton swabs, a rubber balloon, a plastic bag, gelatin, sugar, baking yeast, and more. It is an incredible toy for STEM skills.

Perfect for putting those problem solving skills into practice, can your tween master the shape-shifting box?

Based on making different 3D geometric shapes, this is the ultimate satisfying magnetic fidget toy and brain teaser. It is a great sensory stimulation puzzle and STEM toy gift that is ideal for older kids as they collect all 12 designs.

Sphero Mini has been around for a few years now and continues to be a real hit with tweens., It is one of the great stem gifts for those entering the world of robotics.

Sphero is a compact, app-enabled robotic ball that offers a unique approach to play and learning. Children can use the Sphero Edu app to program the Sphero Mini, learning the fundamentals of coding by drawing paths, using Scratch blocks, or writing their own JavaScript.

Beyond coding, the Sphero Mini’s games and challenges also nurture problem-solving skills and creativity, making it an engaging educational tool that feels more like a toy than a classroom lesson.