Five Guilt-Free Gadgets for Kids

As a parent, I know how hard it is to select a new toy for your kids. You want them to enjoy themselves without turning into mindless, blood-splattering video game addicts. Say the word "educational," though, and that pricey new gizmo will find its way straight to the bottom of the abandoned-toy box.

Fortunately, there is a middle ground: software and gadgets that are fun and also help teach fundamental principles of electronics, engineering, music, and more. Some of my top five picks are new for 2007, while others debuted in years past but are still worthy of note. Just don't call them educational.

1. A Little Soft Music

True or false: All iPods are small, come in durable hard-plastic cases, and are built by Apple. It's true if you're an Apple lawyer. But Super iPod DIY Kit lets you build a pillow-size iPod out of, well, a pillowcase, along with a handful of electronics, a "hacked" Coby MP3 player, some conductive fabric, and a whole lot of thread. Along the way your children learn the basics of electrical schematics, conduction, and insulation, as well as how to wow their friends at the next sleepover. The project comes via Tech DIY, a site devoted to science projects that mothers can do along with their kids. You can purchase the $45 kits from Etsy.com.

2. Plug, Program, and Play

Like Lego Mindstorms, PicoCricket is an insidiously sneaky way to teach your children the basic principles of programming. The $250 kit from the Playful Invention Company combines Lego bricks, fuzzy pipe cleaners, and other goofy materials with highly sophisticated sensors for light, motion, sound, and touch. Your kids build an object, use the PicoBlocks software to program it, and then download their program to the device via a USB cable. Building programs is simply a matter of dragging different "blocks"--puzzle-like pieces with commands such as "play sound" or "light off"--into the proper sequence. Before long your young inventors will be able to create cats that purr when touched or a birthday cake that lights up when people sing. But Pico is not just for the wee ones in your house: The 2007 edition features new "motion modules" that demonstrate important scientific and engineering concepts for middle schoolers.

3. Point and Brick

If your kids dream of becoming architects, designers, or structural engineers, this software/toy combo will give them a Lego up. Download the free Lego Digital Designer 2.0 software from the Lego Factory, and you and your children can design your own Lego creations on a PC or Mac. When the masterpiece is done, you can upload the design to the Lego Factory site and then order the pieces necessary to build the structure, along with step-by-step instructions. Or you can download designs that others have created and edit them. Just make sure your ambitions match your budget--a 1200-piece scale model of the Parthenon will cost you $170 in Lego.

4. The Zoundz of Things to Come

Zizzle Zoundz must be zeen (and heard) to be believed. This electronic music machine would look right at home on the planet Vulcan. To produce different sound samples, you place a Zoundz object on one of the glowing colored hot spots on the amoeba-shaped sound board. For example, the blue pawn-shaped object adds chimes and xylophone, the red cylinder contributes a funky bass line, the yellow twisty thing produces strings, and I'd swear the white fuzzball is a hammer dulcimer (but don't quote me on that). Before long your children will be mixing sonic creations that make Brian Eno sound like Barry Manilow. When they achieve a groove they like, they can save a 20-second snippet to use as their morning wake-up alarm. And when they just want to listen to tunes, they can plug in an MP3 player and use Zoundz as an external speaker, complete with funky light show. Available for $50 from ToysRUs.com.

5. The Write Stuff

A computer inside a pen? Believe it. LeapFrog's Fly Fusion Pentop Computer works as a regular ink pen but with a brain, capturing everything your child writes--from lecture notes to random doodles--in his or her Fly Notebook. A tiny camera records pen movements on an optical grid built into the notebook's Fly Paper. Connect the device to a Windows PC, and it uploads all of their work and converts the handwriting into digital text. But that's just the beginning. An update to the award-winning Fly Pentop, the cigar-size Fusion adds a talking calculator, a 1000-word Spanish translator, and an MP3 player. Write out a math problem in the notebook, and the calculator will state the answer. Write a word in English, tap a few times, and the Fusion will recite the corresponding word in Spanish. You can even write the word play inside a square and then tap it to start the MP3 player. (Try doing any of that with a Bic pen.) The $80 device also works with more than three dozen software titles, from homework helpers to games based on the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean movies; titles cost from $2 to $30 apiece.