As an office of tech lovers, we get excited about new toys and gadgets. Recently, we’ve seen a surge of innovative and educational toys- designed just for kids!

Here are just a few of our favorite new toys, games and apps that encourage STEM learning and beginner coding skills.

1.Goldie Box

Goldie Box encourages young girls to innovate and invent. An elaborate Rube Goldberg machine introduces kids to Goldie Box with catchy parody songs. The first small business ad featured during the Super Bowl, this new start up seeks to disrupt the classic “pink aisle”. Designed to teach building, construction and the basics of engineering Goldie Box encourages creativity in kids. 

2. Robot Turtle

This adorable board game declares that it’s never too soon to teach your kids programming skills. Created by former Google engineer Dan Shapiro, children ages 3-8 learn the basics of writing code offline.  Modeled around a traditional board game, kids create a set of instructions.  By directing an adult to move their turtle to its corresponding jewel kids learn the importance of specific directions.

3. Move the turtle

Much like Robot Turtle, Move the Turtle teaches children (ages 5+) the basics of programming.  This iPad and iPhone app uses a friendly Turtle to introduce your child to the step by step to the basic concepts of programming. 

4.Lottie Doll

The Lottie Doll collection aims to promote STEM learning, like building your own robot. She’s built to reflect the body type of a typical 9 year old girl. Straying away from the impossible the Barbie body type Lottie can even stand on her own two feet.

5.LittleBits Circuits

littleBits wants you to make something that does something! Grounded in an open source library of electronic modules, systems of tiny circuit-boards are engineered to snap together with magnets. Specific functions (light, sound, sensors and buttons) create anything from speakers to a dancing robot. They make prototyping easy and learning circuitry fun. Check out user videos online for some clever uses and geeky fun!

6.Thames & Kosmos Smart Car Robotics Kit

Test Drive the Car of the Future, boasts the Thames & Kosmos website. This sleek, futuristic toy car is steered via tablet or smartphone app.  It's programmed by a simple, downloadable script- just spread QR codes across your floor.  Soon you’ll be driving this little guy through a virtual augmented reality cityscape on screen. Made for kids ages 10 and up, we might just get one for the office. 

7.Roominate Dreamhouse

Unlike Barbie’s dream house this one, designed by Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford alums, is on a mission to get more girls interested in engineering. Another STEM-focused toy, it provides construction kits that have girls wiring and building their own dream houses in no time. Their website shows off dozens of videos and pictures for inspiration.

8.Hopscotch

Recommended for kids ages 8 to ∞, Hopscotch was inspired by MIT’s Scratch. It gives kids a creative way to learn the fundamentals of computer programming. You can program characters to move, draw, and collide with each other, controlling them by shaking, tilting, or even yelling at the iPad. Hopscotch also offers #HourOfCode video tutorials online for inspiration and help. 

9.Daisy The Dinosaur

Created by the same folks at Hopscotch Technologies, Daisy introduces even younger children to coding. A drag and drop interface lets kids ages 5-7 animate Daisy, making her dance across the screen. Using simple instructions and tutorials, children can make their little green dinosaur move, jump, shrink or grow, and rotate. They’ll soon intuitively grasp the basics of objects, sequencing, loops and events by solving this app's challenges.

Bonus: After playing Daisy, kids can choose to download a kit to program their own computer game.

10. Lammily

Move on over Barbie! Now, we know this isn’t totally a tech toy- but we’re excited to see it surpass its funding goal, raising $397,201 with 24 days left. This doll, designed by artist Nickolay Lamm is modeled after the average teenage woman. Unlike Barbie, she has realistic proportions and bendable writs, knees, elbows and feet. The “Lammily” doll carries the tagline “Average is Beautiful". She is “fit and strong” and Lamm hopes that kids who will emulate her attainable fitness and body image goals.

A lot of these projects began as kick starter campaigns and day dreams. We’re excited to watch them take off and start taking on the big leagues. And, well, you’re never too old to play, right?

Let us know if you uncover any other gems. Share your favorites with us on Twitter or Facebook.