Eric and all, Here are my notes from the STEM discussions. Snap Circuits - a lego type electronics education kit. I recommend the 300 or 500 size kits. At 8 my son can solo follow plans and build a FM radio receiver that works. Lightbot - program logic thinking for young kids. Scratch - visual object programming via flash website. . . . . . . code.org - sample scratch programs Alice 3 - app is not very stable. . . . . . . - more powerful and complex items Squeak - What-if. Xkcd.com Theoatmeal.com Rasberry pi robot Tim included some ther non kid / STEM discussion about the systems tools with Hadoop for rapid system building & clustering. Since the meeting I found two more I plan to try with my 8 year old. . Dragonbox Algebra - unique app for learning Math. & Algebra. . IOS & Android. MIT App Inventor - web app development which will also work on phones & tablets. Hope this helps, Joel