Teaching kids to code with Cubetto 

I have an extraordinarily bright five year old. I’ve been homeschooling her using first and second grade workbooks, but she mostly teaches herself. She reads at about a third grade level. As a busy work-at-home-mom, I’m always looking for ways to challenge her, ways that don’t necessarily require a ton of my personal attention, but will help her grow her budding intellect. 

I’ve seen toys on Instagram that teach young kids how to code, and I’ve been totally intrigued. Who doesn’t want to give their kids that extra learning edge, and in a manner that captures their attention as well? So I reached out to Primo Toys, hoping to partner with them to share with the world the awesomeness of Cubetto. 

This post has been sponsored by Primo Toys, however, all opinions are my own. Please see my disclosure for more information.

A few days ago I shared on Facebook Live a demonstration of how Cubetto works, and you can check that out here. 

One of the things that really impressed me about Cubetto was how easy it was to learn. My five-year-old daughter figured it out in probably less than twenty minutes. Now, the beauty of it is that even though she understands how to use it, she is going to be continually challenged by learning how to pick a square on the World Map and figure out how to get Cubetto to go there. She has to deal with the frustration of making mistakes and having him leave the map altogether, and also the joy of discovering that she programmed him correctly when he arrives at the right spot. 

So how does an adorable wooden robot teach kids to code?

Cubetto can’t go anywhere without his buddy, the Interface Board. Once they’re both powered on and paired, the small, colored, plastic blocks work as the commands for Cubetto. The uniquely-shaped and colored blocks each have their own purpose: go straight, turn right, turn left, or perform a function. 

The function is my daughter’s favorite part. The section of the interface board that is encased by an oval is the Function Line. A pattern indicated here will be repeated every time the blue function block is used. This is great because first of all, you would run out of blocks if you didn’t use it. Second of all, it represents a very important element of coding that kids can easily learn at a young age. 

The World Map is Cubetto’s playground, his passport to adventure. It’s comprised of squares with different features representing destinations. Your child can pick where they want Cubetto to go, they program him using the plastic blocks and the Interface Board, they set him on the starting block, and push the big green button to make him go. 

The great thing is that there’s not just one map; Primo Toys has not only several maps of adventures available, they also have tons of creative ideas for making Cubetto’s journey more hands-on and exciting at primotoys.com. 

I found Cubetto to be not only as sweet and endearing as a wooden robot could be, but also simple to use, brilliant, and challenging for my daughter. If you have young children at home, I definitely recommend you check out Primo Toys and Cubetto. A learning adventure awaits your children, a world away from cell phones and tablets, where their imagination sets the pace and a whole new world awaits them. 

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