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Robot Gift Buying Guide 2017

A toy robotic beetle

There are a lot of robot-themed toys and robot-themed remote controlled vehicles out there. They are cool and all, but if your kid wants to learn about robotics, there are better choices.

When I look for a robot toy that will actually help a kid learn the basics of robotics, I look for programming and sensor-based movement. If it doesn’t move, it’s probably just a computer game. If you drive it around, it’s an R/C toy, not a robot. At a bare minimum, you want the kids to be able to program a series of moves, then hit go and watch their program execute, or else you want at toy that can explore on its own without your kid steering. If a toy lets them do that, it counts as a real robot in my book.

But, you say, a robot-themed toy is helping them learn about A and B as well as mechanical blah blah. Sure. Don’t get me wrong, those toys can be great and fun and can help kids learn things, but they aren’t learning robotics. A toy has to move on its own, according to a program you entered, or it needs sensors that lets it move around and make decisions about where to go based on feedback. These are the fundamental core concepts of robotics, which is why I look for them in a good robot toy.

 

Here are some toys that look good

Code & Go Robot Mouse The best way for a kid to learn about robotics is to program one, see how it accomplishes a task, change her program, and try again. Give her a programmable robot and a maze, and have her program the bot to solve the maze. We’ve done that with our LEGO robot, and our daughters had a ton of fun. Learn-to-code apps (Kodable and LightBot are two we enjoy) do just that. I’ve never used this toy, so I can’t speak to the quality or any of that, but it has the core things I’d want out of a first robot.

HEXBUG Beetle Our kids have one, and we all love it. The legs are a tad fragile, but it walks in a straight line until it’s feelers bump something, then it backs up, turns, then walks in a different direction. The Beetle is a very cheap robot that autonomously explores its environment. Scale this concept up and you’ll eventually get to the Mars Rover. It’s a great demonstration for how real robots operate.

LEGO Boost We have the LEGO EV3 robot system. It’s extremely flexible and extendable, however it isn’t cheap and it uses the more advanced Tecnic-style LEGO parts. New this year is a LEGO robot system that is less expensive, and it uses standard bricks (as well as some specialty parts). The ability to code is pared down, but for an early robot, it appears to have the whole package: programmable movement and sensors to give feedback. I’ve not used it, but I recommend this one over the EV3 for a first robot, mostly due to the simplified coding required.

HEXBUG Nano If your kids aren’t ready to code, but also don’t put toys in their mouth anymore, I recommend the HEXBUG Nanos. See my old post.

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Paleontology Toys or How To Cover Your House With Plaster Dust

Mega Fossil Mine Dig Kit box cover
Mega Fossil Mine Dig Kit box from amazon.com

For Christmas last year, my then 5 year old wanted all things paleontology. And Lego. We opted for the former since we knew she had lots of Lego sets coming. We got her a great dig-your-own-fossil kit from National Geographic called the “Mega Fossil Mine Dig Kit“.

She’s done similar kits before, and loved them, but this kit really stood out for us for one reason: real fossils. If you aren’t familiar with these kits, they have small fossils embedded in a big plaster brick. It comes with a brush and digging tool and require lots of elbow grease. Similar kits we’ve tried had plastic replicas or plastic bones that can be put together. Those were fun as well, and she always enjoys getting messy, but something about digging actual fossils out of the plaster really excited her.

It took several evenings to dig out all the fossils, and each night, she would wash off her finds and then show them off to everyone. Once she finished, she set up a little museum and walked us around the exhibits. The kit came with a book about fossils, which we read with her, so she was able to tell us all about them.

Set of fossils on a table top
All the fossils we dug out of the kit.

The only downside to the kit is that the plaster is pretty solid, and she would get worn out scraping and brushing. It took a long time until we hit the first fossil, and she almost lost interest. I helped her get going, and once we unearthed our first find, she was hooked. Still, we had to take turns digging. Kids with more arm strength shouldn’t run into that problem. We’ve tried two other kits. One was very brittle and she demolished it readily. The other is even more solid and she eventually gave up on it. We’ll bring it back out this summer and try again. Oh, also, if you aren’t careful, you can get plaster dust everywhere. We set the brick in a cookie sheet to contain it.

By far, her favorite find was the coprolite, a.k.a. dinosaur poo. You can’t imagine the glee in her voice when she showed everyone her poo. We’ll have to turn it into a necklace. Maybe a good gift idea for next year, though she already wants a chewy toy necklace, so maybe that’s not such a good idea. In any case, this dig kit was a huge hit and helped keep her excited about paleontology. It has now surpassed “face painter” as her longest running “what I want to be when I grow up”.