Think of it like secretly mashing up a few peas and mixing them in with the tomato sauce, giving a child a gift this holiday season that’s genuinely fun yet, sneaks in some of that increasingly important STEM education.
Cozmo, if you can get your hands on one, is a $180 robot kind of like Wall-E from the Disney movie. It loves to stack boxes. And while he/she comes ready to play all sorts of games with you, there is an element for kids to program this little guy/gal themselves.
“You can play games with him. He’ll get better over time, more interesting, grow, he’ll get to know you," says Charlie Hite of Anki.
If your child does love to deep dive into the whole robot DIY thing, Jimu robots start at $150. It’s a kit for building and programing the robot from scratch, and then using a mobile device really getting to play with it just like you would a pre-programmed one.
“Not only can you build the robot from scratch with whatever creativity you have, you can also create its actions and create a sequence, make it dance, make it move to the left, move to the right," says Jessica Domingo of UBTECH Robotics.
And finally, video games, what child doesn’t like those? Well, Bloxels lets your child create their own in a unique, digital code-less way. They simply lay out physical blocks on this board, snap a shot of it with the companion mobile app, and just like that, it’s a game.
“You’re building a combination of characters and pixel art and layouts of your game, it’s based on a run and jump game and you can play that game, configure it, and ultimately share it with your friends," says Robin Rath of Bloxels.
The Bloxels kit costs $40. The free companion app is available on iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire devices.