Affordable home kits?

[Tigerlily]

I've just recently begun to get involved with FTC/FRC as an event volunteer, and was thinking it might be fun to get involved with a team as well (as a technical mentor - I'm an electrical engineer).

The thing is, I haven't had much opportunity to play around in the robotics arena, so I'd like to do some fiddling on my own first...any recommendations for affordable home kits that I could play around with that would allow me to brush up on my programming and electrical skills a bit? Ideally something with skills/languages that would translate well to what kids are learning on these teams. I'm a little rusty, so I don't want to inflict myself on some poor unsuspecting teenager without some review first!