Thames & Kosmos | 567012 | Coding & Robotics | Stem
Thames & Kosmos | 567012 | Coding & Robotics | Stem Experiment Kit | 30 Coding Experiments | Build and Code Robots | Ages 4-8
| Dimensions: | 42.67 x 8.13 x 29.21 cm; 2.67 Kilograms |
| Model: | 567012 |
| Material: | Plastic Paper |
| Colour: | Multicolor |
| Pack Quantity: | 417 |
| Batteries Required: | Yes |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Age: | 4 years and up |
| Assembly: | Yes |
| Dimensions: | 42.67 x 8.13 x 29.21 cm; 2.67 Kilograms |
| Material: | Plastic Paper |
| Quantity: | 417 |
The course layout cards are the big ones and have different things on each side. So when you are putting together a layout, you have to hunt through both sides of about 20 cards. That’s fine for the older kids but the little ones get distracted. My solution is to number each card with an A or B for the side. Then I went through every layout in the book and wrote the Card number/letter on the diagram. Now instead of having to shuffle through all the cards I just look for the number.
We haven’t worn out the cards yet but we will. I wish the company made more robust cards using wood or plastic.
My grandson absolutely loves this! He is over the moon excited that he can make something that comes “alive”. Seeing him laugh with excitement and awh of his creatio
This is a most a most incredible toy. All the characters are adorable and there are many many of them. The coding strip concis well understood by my 5 yo and the stories about what the characters are trying to do hold his interest. The instructions are clear and can be followed by my 5 yo without help. At first I helped push the blocks together all the way but now they have broken in to a reasonable amount of force. With the tool my son can take most things apart himself. The robot itself is impressive. For example it does a good job at centering itself when a child places it crooked. Few toys have I been this happy about because of how well it works, how much it is teaching him, and how well it holds his interes
Se los compre a mis hijos para que aprendieran las bases de la programacin de robots y estn encantados, ya que ahora comprenden como se debe programar un robot desde cero, han hecho desafos muy interesantes. Se la pasa un buen rato del da entretenidos con este kit de codificacin de robots y yo pues me dedico a hacer mis cosas con la seguridad de que estn en su cuarto jugando, pensando y utilizando su tiempo en algo creativo e ingenioso que les va a servir en un futuro cercano. Lo que mas les gusto y a mi tambin, es que no necesitas de una computadora, ni de una tablet ni de un celular para poder programarlo.
We love this & use as an entire robotics curriculum for our 5 year old, very impressed with versatility and robust content. Love that you don’t need an app or computer for lessons. Teaches & reinforces wide array of STEAM skills.
Fantastic! The stories are fun, they encourage open-ended creative play. Lots of robots to build, pieces are easy for my 7 year old to manipulate himself. He’s been teaching himself from the manual (he can read). Lessons are clear and easy to follow. Even the 4 year old is getting in on it. We’ve been beyond thrilled.
One must be very careful with the carton pieces as these are subject to damages. Not fully understand how much damage could thes carton take before it will not work properly anylonger.
Good luck!
To make it work you use cards to ‘code’ the robot. Place them in a card ‘track’ and the robot reads them, then you place the robot on the grid-map, built like a jigsaw of large card squares. The robot calibrates itself before heading off, and continually calibrates itself on the squares, so there’s no veering off course.
There are bricks which you use to build different robot characters and its friends. The instructions are also a storybook which keeps children engaged. I downloaded the instructions from the manufacturers website before buying. Batteries last well.
Positives:
Cards make coding very easy and visual.
Different robot designs keep things interesting and fun.
The different sounds, movements and lights are cute and fun.
The robot continuously checks and stays on course, so this is fine for playing on a table.
Really good instructions.
Negatives:
The cards are too thin. They become disconnected too easily on anything but a hard surface.
Slight downside is the number of parts that comes with it. Require time to put together before it runs for the first time. Moving on to the next chapter require tearing down of the previous robots u created. My 5yo didn’t want to tear it down cuz she spent so much time making it.
A wonderful introduction to coding for kids! My 6 year old daughter and I built the first robot, Sammy the Sandwich, today and really enjoyed coding the robot with the cards and watching him carry out the programmed instructions! The stories in the step-by-step instruction book help make it accessible for kids. We are looking forward to progressing through the book and trying the harder programs. Would recommend!
As for the reviews about too many pieces to deal with, I found a simple organizing box (pictured which was actually M&D box from a car set) helps organize all the pieces perfectly. The cards have a little holder which keeps them all organized. I can’t complain with the number of pieces, it makes it super flexible and a great value.
This is a nice set for younger children. I appreciate more than anything that it doesn’t require apps or electronics to use. Other than batteries, everything we need is right within the box. There are lots of pieces and it takes some time to put together in the beginning(and a bit along the way), but it’s simple in its teaching method. There’s a guide for the teacher(guardian of any sort) to help the child along. It doesn’t get into the more complicated side of coding. It stays on the beginning level, making it easier to guide the learner into more complicated ideas later on.
There aren’t enough pieces to create all the other characters within a scenario without taking some apart along the way. I can’t help but be disappointed in this, but there are already quite a few pieces included. I also wish there was some sort of storage included. The cards aren’t that thick and will bend easily, making them unusable. I don’t have one yet to fit all the sizes, but a smaller sized storage container to keep them separated and protected would be ideal. All the other pieces can easily be put in plastic baggies, since they are more durable.
3 AA batteries are needed for the robot base. The piece covering the batteries doesn’t require a screwdriver to be removed. There’s a little tab that can be pressed to remove it and it simply clicks back into place. I appreciate the simplicity of that feature.
Overall, we’ve been mostly pleased with this set. It’s cute and fun.
1) It doesn’t require any other devices. None. No tablet. No phone. Nothing else is needed save batteries.
2) The robot and the cards are very child-friendly and gender neutral in design. It appeals equally to both son and daughter.
3) It needs map cards to run on. This makes it easier to plan programs. We also have a codeapiller which runs on any smooth flat surface but it is kind of hard to anticipate how far each move will take it unless you are on a surface with a linoleum or tile with a grid pattern.
4) There is a building aspect to it similar to using legos (from the 90’s not the modern kits that are more for show than play) or tinker toys. This means the robot’s function and look can be greatly customized opening a range of possibilities.
From our own experience this coding toy is something you have to be hands on with initially particularly with an emerging reader. The robot comes with a manual that is 64 pages thick. Each lesson builds on previous ones but after the first two my child was wanting to create small changes to the program.
The third set of instructions has you programing the robot to go forward, pause, then return to start. The cards made this a story about waking up a friend so my daughter wanted to add one of the sound cards too. She chose the mouse sound and it was loud enough to be heard easily without being annoying to those nearby. (If you have a codeapiller you know how loud and annoying it can be as it moves even without the sound/song sections.)
While initially my six-year-old’s interest fluctuate due to the time it took to go over the directions together and assemble the robot once we started running the programs she was excited and began looking at all the coding and room cards imagining the possibilities. She also started playing with the second non-robot character as you would any doll or action figure making it follow Sammy back to the start point.
We didn’t get beyond the first few programs because it did take some time to set everything up and learn how to use the robot. For a first run through plan on about an hour, have ziploc bags for spare parts, and fresh AA batteries. If you try to run it with batteries with a partial charge the robot will turn on but it won’t move to read the program cards.
I am very pleased with this robot, how sturdy it is, the amount of customization it allows, just everything. I don’t know if I can think of anything that could be changed to improve upon it. Even the price, though a bit more, is worth it. More than likely my nephew will be getting his own set for his upcoming 6th birthday.
The instruction book is even better for introducing children to the concept of coding and how it is simply instructions for a computer that doesn’t understand complex commands like, ‘Go put the ball in the basket’. The coding is very straightforward and easily understood by even normal children between 4-5 year olds. The book includes a number of good examples and even other prompts without answers. It is wonderful.
The ONLY problem that I have with this is that coding is physically awkward. The coding is performed with microprinted cards that fit into specially cut cards that hold the instructions at set intervals. (in essence, there is a small tile that sits into a cutout into another piece of paper). This is great, because they’re exceptionally reusable, as you can even pop them out and reuse the same tiles later in your code without resorting to complex logical structures like ifs and loops. The only problem is that the tiles and the cards that that you put them in are quite thin paper. As such, it is hard to get sufficient friction in that third dimension to get them to hold still. It would be much better if there was a plastic dock that the tiles could sit in. The robot could get a good 6-8 instructions and then pause while you switched them out.
Otherwise this is a great product! After the first lesson my girls wanted us to make it talk (say “hi”), blink lights, turn around, and go beyond the simple Lesson 1 routine. My kindergartner is mastering the basic movement coding cards and the younger girls like playing with the colorful characters we built!
There are a ton of pieces, so be prepared to keep track of them and for a bit of clean up when not in use. It’s an extensive kit, and it’s not cheap, but it’s worth it if you know your kid is up to the challenge.
What this is: An introduction to kids of If/Then commands with a battery operated robot that reads cardboard to take the commands and then goes over other cardboard to execute the commands. The robot can be “Built” with Lego Technic-Like pieces to look like different things within the stories of programs.
-Good instruction manual that is easy to follow.
-Great that it does not need apps or other third party devices.
-Good for ages 6-8 at least. Probably through 9 depending on their level.
Positives:
-Works as promised and easy to learn. Great introduction to programming.
-Fun for kids of various ages.
-Price is about right as it can provide hours and hours and days and days of fun and learning.
Negatives:
-Needs cardboard that comes with it to run. Cardboard can be crushed a little easy. For example my beagle stepped on one and bent it and it won’t connect as easily but will still work.
-Robot takes maybe 15-20 seconds to “Center” itself before executing program.
-Not a great way to organize all of the cardboard and components so you will need to re-organize every time you re-start unless you get your own organization system aside from this box.
Overall, solid value but great learning tool that does exactly what it says it will. Love that both my 6 and 8 year olds can do different things with it.
Two things worth mentioning. It says “K-2” as a grade recommendation on the box; I disagree. My daughter is in fourth grade, and is a very good student, and some of this will be challenging for her at first. I see it more as a “2-4” or even “2-5” grade recommendation. Second, at $117 at time of writing, it seems a bit pricey, but there are a LOT of pieces, 30 included experiments of scaffolded difficulty, and plenty of options for your child to creatively program outside of the experiments. One of the best STEM toys I have seen.
This Kids First Coding & Robotics Science Experiment Kit is great for teaching young ones how to code. You will definitely want to assist kids as they get started using this, and I think age 4 (which is what the package says his kit is good for) is the absolute rock-bottom age. Ages 5 or 6 can do this with a lot of adult help, ages 7 – 8 will probably do better, but will need some adult guidance to get them started. Quite frankly, the young teens & tweens who hang around my house got a kick out of this, and they didn’t need any help at all.
How it works: Line up the program cards on the table (or floor). Then set Sammy the Sandwich to ride over those cards. An optical scanner reads your instructions in the order that you laid them down. Sammy is now programmed! (I joke that it’s kind of like my first Apple computer which didn’t have a hard drive.) But seriously, once Sammy is programmed, set him down and he will run his program.
The “codes” (instructions) start out basic, but get more complex as you go through the manual. And, as someone who holds a Masters degree in training and development, I was impressed with how well the instruction manual was laid out. Excellent for teaching kids logic and sequencing. Hats off to the designers of this manual.
However, despite the great work of the engineers and the instructional designers, whoever designed the packaging may have been taking Mondays and Fridays off. The kit doesn’t come with any decent storage for all the parts (it has only small sections divided by cardboard within the box), and you don’t want these cards getting bent or pieces getting lost. I strongly recommend buying some Tupperware containers to store your code cards and all the plastic pieces.
I strongly recommend this for giving kids a strong foundational understanding about coding, especially if they are tactile, kinesthetic learners. I would give it five stars, but I’m going with four because of the lack of storage containers and the fact that it’s priced a little high. Still, it’s an excellent product that I highly recommend.
That being said, this is a wonderful and simple way to show robotics and coding logic to kids. My 6 year old was able to follow the directions and build everything on her own, whereas my 5 year old needed some assistance. Their 4 year old cousin had no concept to process this at all, hehehe.
The robot works well and the instruction cards are easy for the kids to predict what the robot will do next (which is how I’ve been working with them, to see if they understand the coding logic). And then apply/test their hypothesis.
Only 2 small gripes, you need a really large table or wood floor depending on which instructions you use because this does not work well on even low shag carpet, as the “track” won’t stay flat for the robot to move across and read the instruction pieces.
The next gripe is that to Read the instruction the robot is placed on the Start and it goes immediately and works great and stays on track. To Play the recorded code instructions, it takes a really, really long time to center itself and Execute. In fact it moves so much that it dilutes what the kids thought they just did — they thought they just recorded the coded instructions for Playback and both kids were wondering, “That’s not what we told it to do…”
Again, why does the robot immediately move for the Recording part, but it doesn’t just immediately move for the Execute part, it sends the kids a mixed message on what they thought they programmed.
I still give this 5 stars by telling them that the Robot needs to adjust itself before it actually does what they programmed and they are okay with that.
There are so many lessons and so many things that this teaches and I am an impressed parent thus far.
What is different about this toy is that it is not just a sequence of step (go left, blink, spin, etc.). Instead, it also has rules. You make a scenario out of a book, then you code the main character to go left, right, forward, back, etc. to complete the maze. Then, you also add rules (if you pass over a heart, then also blink and make noise, when you get to the end, spin your gears). So, it is a basic sequence, then rules for things encountered along the way.
The set up, which takes too long and expense more patience than little kids have, is that you build some characters and props with blocks that snap together, then you make a maze with large cardboard puzzle pieces. This makes characters and a scene for you to code actions into. The main character is a large block with a detector on the bottom (you style the main character like a character – sandwhich, fire truck, etc. to make a story). It detects some code cards then detects the maze puzzle cards. You have some big grey coding strips with slots for code cards. The block rolls along that strip of code cards to learn the code. Then you put it in the maze and it acts out the code.
Building the characters and maze takes too much time and space. The block building expended my 5 year old’s patience and he rolled on the floor while I made characters. The maze is like large paper puzzle pieces. It has to be on a hardfloor, and it is big puzzle pieces. I had to move furniture in the dining room to be able to set up the maze in this code kit.
Lots of pieces are cardstock paper and will tear up. The cards for coding are like this, as are the puzzle piece cards to make settings where the robot can run. And when he’s coded, he has to be on the paper maze cards. If you put him on the floor he will beep and show a blinking red light. You need the paper and you need it to be in good condition. Bent edges, and the robot will snag as he rolls. Dirty surface and he won’t read the card (the robot is detecting little differences in how the dots of ink in printing are arranged – this was in the intro to the instruction book). This can’t be used in a group setting or it will be quickly torn up and no longer useable. The paper parts have to be kept clean and unscuffed and unwrinkled.
Definitely you have to closely supervise a child with this, and cannot leave it out.
With lots of set up done ahead of time, my just turned 5 year old was interested in using the code cards and modifying codes In the booklet to do things like fine a new way In the maze, or do different activities on the way there. He is the perfect age for this kit. But it was so much set up and space. No one with little kids has these resources. My 3 year old likes the characters in the different mazes, but this was a little too advanced for him.
In short: The code aspects of this are fantastic. But it requires too much time to set up, it takes up more space than people have and needs a hard floor not carpet, and needs paper pieces to be kept neat and clean. The coding aspect is perfect designed for little kids (good for 5 year old) but the kit is made of materials like for an adult with a clean spacious area for it and kids not around.
It basically teaches logic without knowing logic. Arrows, action cards, numbers – it’s all a common sense visual approach. The assembly instructions for the various projects are easy to follow. Like Lego, there are plenty of clear diagrams to follow – and things are easier and faster if you pre-sort all the pieces.
Literally hours of activities in the book, and even more creating your own projects and sets of actions.
I wish the pieces were a little thicker – they are basically very thin cardboard with a thin lamination and don’t feel durable. Without caution they are easy to accidentally folds or crease. But so far so good. We store the pieces in baggies since the box is not that great when it comes to storage. The dividers move around quite a bit – I’m going to hot glue them in place. The cards are stored beneath the dividers, so sorting them in baggies stops them from shifting around.
The instruction book is VERY thorough and easy to follow. It takes the users step-by-step through the process in a fun and memorable way so that the lessons stick with the users. My husband and 14 y.o. nephew (he has Asperger’s) spent a Saturday putting together characters like Pops and Little Milk (whom they deemed to be a rapper that goes by Lil’ Moo). The various characters aren’t hard to put together, and they stay together for the most part. Some of the pieces fit a bit loosely, and we fixed that with a little bit of Gorilla Glue. A word of caution before you start – you will need a LOT of space to lay this out. Sammy (the sandwich) needs a good bit of room on a steady surface to roll over the code cards and read the commands. If there are any bumps, lumps, or imperfections in his path of cards, he will bleep with an error signal. I think the longest command we built for Sammy was close to ten feet long. Sammy can be programmed to do quite a few things, and there are coding cards which will activate pre-programmed routines for Sammy to complete. If you try to use a card that won’t work in a coding sequence, Sammy will give an error and stop.
The biggest downside to this kit is they don’t provide any containers or even cheap plastic bags to store the code cards, path cards, characters, etc. The inside of the box is separated into six sections, but this isn’t great for storing all the loose pieces. If you take out the cardboard section the dividers are attached to, all the boards and various pieces fit much, much better. And adding a Velcro dot to keep the lid closed, or even a loop and ball latch would have been good. We ended up using some adhesive-backed Velcro pieces to keep the box securely closed. There are so many tiny parts to this that can get lost, and if one of the coding cards were to get lost that would definitely impact future adventures. I would have to take off half a star for this lack of foresight, especially for the age group this kit is aimed at.
As I said earlier, this is the first time any of us have delved into the world of coding, but it was such a fun way to spend the day. We started early in the morning, and created all sorts of routines for Sammy and his friends. The coding language used reminded me of the ‘if this, then that’ programming language I learned waaaaaaay back in middle school in 1989. If you don’t have any experience with coding regardless of your age, this is an excellent kit to start out with. I think coding will be one of those skills people in the near future will need if they want to be able to keep current with their job and/or technology. There are several coding kits out there, and it would be fun to find ways to combine them all and have them interact. This is a wonderful way to bring excitement and fun to learning.
“left” plus timing cards and simple “if” and “then” commands.
I liked that no external device was required, but this was a little basic for even my 7-year-old second grader, though too advanced for my 3-year-old. The robot which “reads” the cards also takes a looooong time to center itself and record the programmed commands (several minutes), leaving my little ones to lose some interest. It’s also a little buggy in that it fails occasionally and then you have to start all over.
There are some pre-designed scenarios that you can follow step-by-step instructions to create, with included props, and they also lay out the instructions to a simple math game that would work well in a group or school situation.
We’ve had other coding toys in the past and this one works OK, with its puzzle piece set-up easily explainable for younger kiddos, though I’m not 100% sure it translates all that well to actual coding in a real world scenario. As is, I’ll give this a mild recommend, as it does work, despite limitations, and is self-contained, but at half, or even two-thirds, the price I’d be a lot more appealing.
My son is 9 and he and his grandma worked together to get this going. Now he’s following the instructions independently and exploring how to make his own operations. This is perfect for any gender child from age 8 with help or probably age 10 without help.
For those looking for terms like this the way I do – my son is an Aspie/has high-functioning autism and this is a predictable, educational problem-solving experience for him.