After assembling the Enter if you Dare "Build Your Electronic Alarm Door," I came to the conclusion that this was a very good tool to introduce young children to the very simple basics of how and why electricity works. The graphics in the book were very explainative of how everything works as far a electricity is concerned in the alarm door. It explained all aspsects of the project from the rubber casings to the resistors flow of electricity. I believe this would be very imformative to a small child to construct. The explanations were simple and I feel over all a young child would enjoy its assembly and its application afterward. The only discrepancy I felt was the age indicator of 3 and older.
We played with the enter if you dare electronic door alarm. Compared to all the other kits this one wasn't half bad. The instruction book really made the kit what it was. The instructions were very easy to follow and informative. Any scientific information that could be learned from the kit was done so through the instuctions. Whether or not an 8 year old would actually pay attention to the scientic infomation would depend on the individual child. Also the kit does not promote any further exploration of the material involved.
The parts in the kit all fucntioned as the were supposed to. It wasn't to hard to put together but it would most definately be difficult or impossible for most kids. One draw back is that the kit is really only intended for one kid to assemble and use and is pretty much a one shot playing experince.
When assembled the kit works as it should. It is realy not all that durable though and would problaly fall apart after the door it is placed on is slammed a couple times. Any parrent who give this to their child would probably regret doing so because it makes a really annoying sound when it goes off.
The only way we thought that this toy could be improved would be to make it part of a kit where a child could make any number of simple electronic devices like a radio shack science kit. A broader kit would foster more interest in the scientific content related to electricty and electronics.