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Do you worry about too much screen time?

I certainly do.

It’s so easy nowadays for our kids to spend hours in front of screens mindlessly watching or playing endlessly repetitive games.

But screens needn’t be mind numbing.

A whole raft of super cool new kids coding tools give children all sorts of active opportunities to get hands on physically manipulating and making stuff.

And hands on “doing” is one of the most important ways kids learn.

Learning Through Doing

Lots of what our kids “have” to learn … whether reading, maths or coding …  is abstract. It’s all about translating the world into symbols and rules.

But most young children struggle to use abstract rules to make sense of new concepts. They understand more by experiencing concepts physically.

Football mad 7 year olds for example have amazing understanding of the concept of angles from endless free kicks. They are just not yet ready to express that understanding using the abstract symbols and rules of maths.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t “get” the concept.

Great kids coding tools give children a hands on conceptual understanding of what coding “is” and of how all the computers around them actually work.

The best kids coding tools transform kids from consumers to creators.

So what are the best kids coding tools out there? A good question because there are so many exciting new tools coming out at the moment…

…well these are some of our current kids coding gadget faves plus some newbies we’ve got our eye on …

Kibo

Kibo lets younger kids build robots using codable building blocks.  The design team have a background in child psychology and have combined super cool tech with a deep understanding of how under 7s learn.

Kibo is designed to encourage kids to collaborate so could be a cool PTA purchase for your kids school or playgroup.

Age Range: 4 to 7

You can buy Kibo from Kinder Lab Robotics. They can ship outside the USA but don’t have an international distributor so shipping is pricey.

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