Sunday morning saw me up early to try out an interesting new tech toy. It is called Cubetto, comes from a London start-up and is a beautifully made kit to introduce children from the age of three to computer coding.
“Teach your child to code before they can read,” Cubetto’s publicity proclaims. One of the key investors is Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Mark. Made mostly of wood, Cubetto has already won a top British toy award and follows Montessori’s early learning principles.
I was intrigued to see if Cubetto could, as promised, teach me “a host of programming concepts, including algorithms, the queue, debugging and recursions”. I gave up after 30 minutes. It was instruction number seven, on “subroutines”, that did for me. Perhaps I am stupid but, as far as I could tell, it made no sense at all. That said, I made Cubetto work and I could see the principle behind it. Using coloured blocks, you input a string of commands to send a 10cm by 7cm wheeled cuboid — with a face — trundling ahead, left and right.
I am sure it will stimulate some brilliant three-year-olds but it was one of the dullest toys I have seen.
Worthy, tasteful wooden educational toys rarely impress children and Cubetto is as heart-sinkingly disappointing as any. It is not gaudy enough, not plasticky enough and not loud enough. Read More......
“Teach your child to code before they can read,” Cubetto’s publicity proclaims. One of the key investors is Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Mark. Made mostly of wood, Cubetto has already won a top British toy award and follows Montessori’s early learning principles.
I was intrigued to see if Cubetto could, as promised, teach me “a host of programming concepts, including algorithms, the queue, debugging and recursions”. I gave up after 30 minutes. It was instruction number seven, on “subroutines”, that did for me. Perhaps I am stupid but, as far as I could tell, it made no sense at all. That said, I made Cubetto work and I could see the principle behind it. Using coloured blocks, you input a string of commands to send a 10cm by 7cm wheeled cuboid — with a face — trundling ahead, left and right.
I am sure it will stimulate some brilliant three-year-olds but it was one of the dullest toys I have seen.
Worthy, tasteful wooden educational toys rarely impress children and Cubetto is as heart-sinkingly disappointing as any. It is not gaudy enough, not plasticky enough and not loud enough. Read More......
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