As a long time “electronics Kid” from the 70’s I renewed my love for Kit building and with the Arduino plugin as a carrot for learning and building Circuits based on Arduino… I just bought a starter Kit… I had a breadboard already but I just wanted to get into this quickly and it seems like a good choice:
also go this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D9M4BQU/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They have a pack of sensors http://www.amazon.com/SunFounder-modules-Arduino-Mega2560-Mega328/dp/B00CBDUD60/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1389731252&sr=1-1&keywords=arduino+sensor+kit
Plan to mess with this for a bit and move into plugin + Vera soon.