Slide: 1 /of 1 .

Caption: CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK

Skip Article Header. Skip to: Start of Article. Christie Hemm Klok Students can learn plenty of biology and chemistry in school. But you can also stealthily incept them with science-y ways of thinking with the right games. The Bot Maze, a new educational toy from MindWare, is a great example. Kids build a mini obstacle course with pre-cut wood planks and send a little toothbrush-head-shaped robot buzzing through it, bouncing off walls, spinning this way and that, generally demonstrating the principles of kinetics as it goes. Along the way, of course, young Einsteins are testing out hypotheses (will putting a plastic ball in this corner ricochet the racer through the doorway?), learning about vibration, motors, and propulsion, and exercising a little creativity as they decorate their robots with bobbles and feathers. But watch out for those! As our kid testers discovered, jaunty tail feathers and bling can trip up the bots as they zip, bump, and spin their way toward an exit. Lesson learned. Slide: 1 /of 11 .Caption: "Our robots’ names were Raspberry and Blueberry." - Paloma, age 6 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDSlide: 2 /of 11 .Caption: "It would be cool if you could control the robots with a controller." - Gavin, age 9 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDSlide: 3 /of 11 .Caption: "My favorite part was watching the robots go through the maze." - Mateo, age 7 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDSlide: 4 /of 11 .Caption: "The easiest part was building the maze because we had directions and the harder part was the decorations and the fun part was watching the robots trying to go through the maze with the obstacles." - Kenedi, age 12 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDSlide: 5 /of 11 .Caption: "I would make an endless track that goes in circles – there shouldn’t be a finish or start – so I can just watch the little bugs fail." - Jude, age 12 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDSlide: 6 /of 11 .Caption: "It was funny because the robots kept getting stuck, going back and forth through the pendulums and doorways." - Max, age 10 Christie Hemm Klok/WIREDAdvertisementSlide: 7 /of 11 .Caption: "The easiest part was decorating the bot, and the hardest part was the feather kept falling off." - Elma, age 12 Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

Slide: 8 /of 11 .

Caption: "It was really fun because you felt like you were actually watching a real racing game—like cars that are moving and trying to get through the obstacles." - Alex, age 12 Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

Slide: 9 /of 11 .

Caption: "The robot tried to knock things over and they boomed it back and they went boooooom-pfffff! They were acting like that." - Fergus, age 6 Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

Slide: 10 /of 11 .

Caption: "I liked the part when I won three times." - Charlotte, age 7 Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED

Slide: 11 /of 11 .

Caption: "It should have a boost – like something that pushes it forward. Like in video games with the arrows to speed it up." - Jude, age 7 Christie Hemm Klok/WIRED