SparkFun Inventor's Kit for Arduino with Retail Case
I bought the Arduino kit to introduce my 13 year old without previous experience to electronics.   He had shown interest in electronics but it never went farther, although he has old electronic experiment boxes, was in the Lego league and has a lego NXT. The Arduino changed it all!  He was delighted with all the components and immediately started to read the booklet. This booklet contains explanations on projects that teach him the basic steps. It's easy enough for him to do the projects by himself. He had 