Mindware Robot Lab
(Mindware $25.95)
Designed to give young kids a first taste of coding. The little readymade robot comes out of the box with a booklet of clear instructions. Load it with a few batteries and it’s ready to take simple commands to go forward, left and right. It's quite simplistic, but probably just on the mark for the youngest players. That said, kids will need an adult to assist and get them started. Use the directions as a reading game with playful rewards. The kit includes wiggly eyes, feathers and other decorations to make each little robot unique. There’s a good size piece of graph paper that kids use to place mini obstacles and/or magnetic shapes on and then figure out how to program the right code for their robot to travel. Add the magnet bar or turn it over and it becomes a fiber point pen that will draw as it goes through the coding program kids put in its memory. 8 and up.
Ages: Older Early School, Young Tweens
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award 2019