Sphero Indi

Why wasn’t this around when my kid was this age? I would have had just as much fun playing with this as they would have! The Sphero Indi is an educational toy for young children. It’s basically a little wheeled ‘robot’ with sensors built in that detect colours. Certain colours mean certain things such as green meaning to turn 45 degrees right or yellow meaning slow down. You put the cards down on a flat surface and send the Indi on its way, depending on what instructions you have given it.

So far, this just sounds like a toy. A really cool one, but a toy none-the-less. Where this comes in to its own as an educational tool is when you start encouraging your child to meet challenges. So, “let’s get Indi over there, past all the furniture without helping it!” becomes a puzzle to solve and a game in its own right that young children will have great fun working out. Associating the different colours with different actions will help to develop logic skills and computational skills also. They have to work out what colour does what themselves and so they learn associative skills too.

The final icing on the cake is the app you can download. In the app, you can start teaching the basics of coding to your little wonders. It uses a simple drop and drag system to add new movements, make Indi make sounds and even flash lights. So, they can learn to re-programme Indi and then use the colours to create their own story or adventure for Indi to go on!

With multiple resources available to download from the main site including Challenge Cards, a guide to supporting literacy and numeracy and a special education guide, this is a really fun way to enhance your child’s education and learning. RRP $125

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