STEMtrunk: Crowdfunding the next generation of Apple engineers and scientists

While most crowdfunding projects look at short term gains for a small group of developers, here’s a project that is worthy of your attention whether or not you have children. STEMtrunk, a project by Aaron Watkins, is a brilliant crowdfunding project that seeks to create a subscription service for educational toys.

The idea makes a lot of sense; while many parents would love to get the latest and greatest educational toy for their K-8 kids to help foster their interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), a lot of those toys are financially out of reach. With STEMtrunk, Watkins and his team hope to create a “lending library” of those rather expensive toys. With a subscription, parents can get their kids a really cool education toy to learn from, then return it to STEMtrunk after a specific time period to get another one. 

What are some of the toys? Think of LEGO Boost, the BOSEbuild Speaker Cube, Cubetto, Sphero SPRK+, Stemosaur, Osmo & Coding Awbie, or the Piper Computer. There are more than 40 products available to STEMtrunk subscribers, 

STEMtrunk also resolves one issue with buying those educational toys outright — kids will often show an immediate interest in the toy and play with it earnestly for a while, but then their attention moves elsewhere. With STEMtrunk, you can make sure that your kids are getting the benefit of learning about STEM by playing with the latest cool educational toys while not spending a lot of money on toys that will soon be collecting dust.

STEMtrunk perks start at $75 for a 3 month early-bird subscription, and also include classroom and school packages. The project is currently 41% funded with 16 days left to go; let’s make sure that this project gets off the ground to kick-start the next generation of Apple engineers and scientists!