Cubetto Wooden Robot : Teaches Young Kids to Code!
Madhu
Want to teach coding to your kids who are as young as 3- years old without having them to sit in front of a screen? You totally can! Meet Cubetto a super kid-friendly wooden robot. Cubetto Playset teaches kids “How to code” through hands-on play and the best part, you do not need a screen! Parents who have any screen-time aversion, this is the Coding Playset for kids you could totally embrace.
We live in a digitized world, and we cannot ignore the fact that children will engage with technology on a daily basis. I want my kids to develop the necessary skills but not spend too much time in front of the screen. Cubetto is helping parents like me to solve this major pain point!. We totally fell in love with the Cubetto playset which is making technology accessible to very young children like mine.
Cubetto has 3 main elements
Cubetto(The Wooden Robot)
Board
Blocks.(16 of them). These are control blocks where,
Green indicates Move Forward,
Red means a Turn right
Yellow means a Turn Left;
Blue is a Function block.
Every Cubetto Playset also comes with, A Fun World Map and a Story Book.
I am happy and thankful at the same time for so many amazing Makers/Inventors who are coming up with such amazing products which help kids cognitive development at an early age.
The Playset came with two books Book 0 and Book 1. So my very first question to my child was Do you know that this whole “Digital world” is dependent on two major values? Bit 0 and Bit 1. That was his very first learning about programming.
My Son was super thrilled to have a robot which could follow his directions. I told him some basics and left rest to him to explore and understand. He is a 7-year-old who could read. But the best part about Cubetto playset is that kids who don’t know how to read yet could also learn to code. My daughter is 2 years old, and she could quickly understand some basic instructions. Like pressing the button on the board would make the Cubetto move and do some fun stuff.
The control blocks were super useful and were very helpful in teaching basic building blocks of coding of engineering. Kids need to place these blocks on the board in a sequence and see what the Cubetto does. Kids could come up with their maps and locations where they want Cubetto to go.Each time Cubetto did something unexpected, my son would go and fix the instructions(problem) by placing the right command blocks. These Command blocks give kids an opportunity to see what mistakes they are making.
If you have followed my blog and the fun stuff I do with my children; you would see that my daughter is involved in any science experiment or STEM-based activity or product we have used thus far. Gender-neutral toys are essential and will help break down the STEM barriers for girls.It’s not an easy task for a parent when you have a little one who is too curious and does not know which direction to go and what to do and an older one who is equally curious but is so independent that he wants to explore and figure things out his way.
I want my little girl to be involved and want to start her early-on on STEM-based activities. Being an engineer myself and having to go through some odds in becoming an engineer, I don’t have the smallest doubt in my mind that I have to start STEM-based learning for my little girl early on! So whenever we start on activities, I have a short session with the two kids where I prepare them to work together. Our engagement with Cubetto was great and at the same time challenging because my little one wanted to do everything by herself. A 3-year-old would just breeze through while playing and learning with Cubetto. But for a two-year-old it’s a bit tricky especially when placing the blocks. My daughter would get mad when she could not fit the controls blocks in their slots. So we had to hold on to her hand while my son placed the blocks for the Cubetto to execute.
Cubetto helps in learning programming easy for anyone. Not just kids. Adults who are intimidated by the word “programming” would find Coding through Cubetto a fun learning.
We always kept the programming to be very basic because of my little one. Coming days my son and I plan to explore and deep dive into more fun stuff of what the programming world has to offer with Cubetto. It will only happen when my little one heads for a nap!!!
How Does Cubetto Work?
How does Cubetto work? This was my son’s first question as to how Cubetto executes when he places the command blocks on the board. So I had to dig in a bit to understand how and what platform the Cubetto is built on, so I could answer his question. I added a bit more information and links for the curious kids and parents alike. “Cubetto is built on top of Arduino, an incredible invention, tool, and community that has opened the world of computing education in amazing, groundbreaking ways.”
Arduino an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino boards can read inputs – light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message – and turn it into an output – activating a motor, turning on a LED, publishing something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on Processing.
You can read more here Arduino. If you want to learn more on Cubetto Playset, I found this Teacher’s guide super informative!
Disclaimer! I was given a free product to review and was not compensated in any way for this review. The Opinions are 100% mine and no way biased
