I have a 3 year old who has finally started reading which is very exciting however I am starting to realise he is more like dad than me. Dad comes from a line of fitters and turners and is very ''right brain" (though he somehow became an accountant). My boy is fascinated with how things work … Loves fiddling with the gears in the car, torches, record players, pumps etc I am just wondering how to nurture this is him? Any good books for with ideas for teaching mechanics/machines? Or toys apart from lego technic? Or anything else? I’ve just spent an hour googling and have come up with very little! I’m illiterate in this area myself. Not mechanically minded at all!
My oldest liked snap circuits at that age. We worked the book together at first. Also Klutz makes some lego “simple machines” books.
ThanksLinzy. He has a smaller version of snap circuits and loves it. I will look into getting the proper thing. I will also look into the book you suggested.
Just wanted to say I looked into the Klutz books (Crazy Contraptions and Chain reactions) and they look perfect.There are also a couple of Klutz titles I believe he’d enjoy so thanks again!
There are plenty of mechanics type apps available if you have an Ithing. We like Monster physics, sprinkle, where’s my water, tinker and oh gosh there is more.
We also like the coding apps. Engineers these days are often needing codeing knowledge so try some of those too.
For toys Lego is your number one choice. Not technics yet. Honestly technics frustrated little kids so save it for later. Normal Lego has a lot of benefits and is worth the expense. Then we liked Magna tiles and pretty much anything magnetic actually.
I often stopped by the vacuum repair place or the small good repair place and got some broken parts for my kids to pull apart using screwdrivers etc as well. My son LOVED this. He took a vacuum cleaning part to kindy for show and tell. Only time all year he was keen to do show and tell! 
We have snap circuits but my boy quickly surpassed them and thankfully my father is an electronic technician and my father in law gave him a bread board a little too young…well that’s what I thought until my dad came over and showed him what it does and well…apparently he wasn’t too young for it! Clearly I am still too young for it. It makes NO sense to me! So don’t be shy to go up age brackets. We have our eye on some of the solar power kits you can get for Christmas
Wow, great reply Mandaplus! I will look into all that. I keep on racking my brain thinking of things that he might like so it’s great to receive your reply. Good He is such a fiddler, always trying to figure out how things work. It’s infuriating at times. The Lego technic books were great, but as you said, not really appropriate for his age group. Didn’t have the fine motor control to create the machines, but I made a few for him and he enjoyed playing with them. I’ve put them up in the cupboard for a later time.