We got so many educational toys for Christmas that I thought I'd highlight some of them. The first and most successful educational toy D-Man got for Christamas was his snap circuit set. This was a present from Grandma and physics-professor Grandpa. It was an instant hit. At first, D-Man was mostly interested in what the circuits did (eg record his voice, light up an LED, etc), but after awhile, he started to get some of the concepts.
Today, we set up a rather complex circuit (for us) using three resistors and two switches to demonstrate how the different resistors affect the LED. It was funny as we were setting up the circuit using different resistors that D-Man told me that they make the LED go dim and didn't want me to use them. Once we set it up, he was very happy that we could make the LED have three different settings. One of the games we played with this one was trace the circuit. With the two switches, we had three different paths so both boys were tracing where the current was going depending on if the switches were on and off. 
