If you’re a follower of BlueBearWood you’ll already know how much we love Meccano in this house and the Mecca Huracan Spyder kit is no exception.
This kit is made up of a 259 pieces including tools and as usual, a well laid out detailed instruction manual.
If you’re new to Meccano the instruction booklet details all the individual parts and contains to scale diagrams of all nuts, bolts and washers so you know exactly which one to use.
The Meccano Huracan Spyder is aimed at 10+ which I’d say is a true representative age group. My daughter (aged 10) was able to do most of it on her own, although this is not her first Meccano set.
As usual we built it over a couple of days, rather than trying to do it on one go.
This balances the need to have a little patience with the desire to be able to run around and expend some kiddy energy. Although I am finding that with each new kit we do the girls desire to keep going is getting longer, which I suppose is because there is less frustration as they become more familiar with following the instructions and using the tools.
The hardest part is definitely pulling the front of the car together, which is why there are no photo’s of this. These pieces of the Meccano Huracan Spyder kit are made of plastic and require a lot of manipulation to get in place. It was definitely a job for the two of us, with myself bending and holding the pieces in place, whilst my daughter screwed them together.
But that doesn’t make it any less fun.
We actually enjoy our Meccano time together, working out the best way to get some of the tricky pieces in place.
Once finished, we found the back bumper rubbed on the back tyres and stopped them spinning freely, but it was fixed easily by loosening the screws and pushing the centre down so the edges lifted at the side lifted off the tyres. It was just a mm, but that was all that was needed!
A nice bit of details is that the front wheels are designed to move. This is also an area of weakness so keep an eye on how tight the screws are as they can fall out!
This is another excellent kit by Meccano and produces a lovely sized model to display when finished. Younger kids will need help making it, but as I mentioned, that’s part of the fun and we love the quality time it gives me and my daughters.
I grab a cup of tea and settle down for a couple of hours problem solving and chatting, all lead by my daughter.
Meccano teaches children so many skills … patience, problem solving, reading, following instructions, tool manipulation (fine motor skills), reasoning and also gives them some calm down time away from the busy lives lots of kids lead.
I choose to use this time to sit and chat to whichever daughter is building the kit and to be there to help or guide them when things get tricky. It’s makes for some real quality time which I know we all treasure as well as creating a really super cool model at the end.
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