Amusement parks are fun for the whole family. There are lots of sights and sounds to enjoy for everyone. There are slow-moving rides for young kids and high adrenaline rides for older children and adults. There is also plenty of good food and interesting people at most amusement parks. Now you can bring a part of the amusement park experience into your own home with the K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster.

This is a roller coaster that you have to construct yourself. Your child will receive a large box from K’Nex that contains over 1200 pieces as well as a roller coaster car, a battery powered car launcher, and an instruction booklet that tells them how to assemble the Lava Launch Coaster. Here’s how the whole process works.

Using the color coded instruction booklet in the K’Nex kit, your child assembles the Lava Launch Coaster. Depending on your child’s age, this could take anywhere from a day to a week. It is recommended for children aged nine and older.

Once the coaster is constructed it should stand approximately four feet tall. Then C batteries need to be added to the car launcher (the only time you’ll need to use a screw driver) and the launcher put into place. Finally, you switch the launcher on, place the car on the launch pad and watch as your roller coaster car rides through over twenty feet of track to a heart pounding finish.

If everything is assembled correctly, your car should travel from start to finish in one seamless whoosh of speed. If you made a mistake in construction the car will halt or possibly even fall off the rails. Either way, your child is experiencing a taste of the amusement park right in your own home.

If the rails aren’t constructed properly, they are learning a valuable lesson in safety and attention to detail. The speed and agility of the K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster are unrivaled by any other building kit on the market. Along with other K’Nex kits for building a Ferris wheel and an Octopus Whirl you can create a whole amusement park in your basement.

The act of creation is important in the development of a child. Whether they are drawing a picture, helping you to create supper, or building a model, it is very important for a child to step back and say: “this is what I did.”

Even though any creative act is important, it is often more impressive to build something that is taller, faster, or stronger than what anyone else is building. K’Nex recognizes that need and has designed its toys to be one step beyond Legos with it comes to building impressive structures.

K’Nex is a snap together building toy that lets kids following instructions to build preplanned models or assemble the pieces however they want to construct creative projects. The K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster kit lets your older child create an amazing four foot roller coaster structure that, if properly assembled, actually shoots a roller coaster car through its daring twists and turns.

The Lava Launch is assembled from over 1200 pieces. This is no easy task, even for a preteen or teenager. There is a sixty page color coded instruction book, or for an added challenge, you can just look at the final picture and try to construct the whole thing that way. K’Nex says that it will take anywhere from a single afternoon to an entire week to construction the Lava Launch Coaster.

This means that when this toy is finally complete and your child is watching the coaster car rocket around the track that he build, he will be filled with a sense of accomplishment for his creation.

There is also the option of downloading a second set of instructions on the K’Nex website that lets you use the same pieces to create a second roller coaster of a slightly less audacious variety.

However, this means that the challenges of building don’t stop just because the first plan has been completed. Instead, the fun can go on for months or years as your child continues to dare himself to build larger, faster, and higher than ever before. All this is possible with the K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster.

Working with your children is one of the best experiences you can give them. Not only are you imparting specific tactical skills, but you are also imparting life lessons in patience, perseverance, and creativity. Sometimes is fun to take the children into your world and have them help you repair your car or refinish furniture.

Other times it is fun to go back into your childhood and work with your children on one of their projects. For both boys and girls, building model kits are a great way to play as well as a way to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the project. Working with your kids to build the K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster is a perfect way to have some family bonding time.

One of the reasons that the Lava Launch Coaster is a great family project is because all family members must agree that it is a really cool toy. By using the 1200 K’Nex pieces that come in the box, you create a volcano-shaped roller coaster that is over four feet high. This coaster is decorated by snap on lava pieces.

The finished result is amazing. What is even more amazing is how fast the roller coaster car races around the track. Even after the fun of building is done, setting up the car on the launch pad and slamming it through the course that you built can create hours of fun.

The K’Nex Lava Launch Coaster needs a considerable amount of work before it is in its finished form, however. It comes with a sixty page instruction book. However, this book is completely color coded and no reading is required. That means that you, your nine year old, and even your six year old can sit down one rainy afternoon and build it together.

The only part where adult hands are really needed is to install the batteries in the car launcher and screw the lid back into place. Otherwise K’nex is all about matching colors and shapes with the pictures in the directions. It is the perfect way to interact with your children in their world.