As we get closer to the Holiday season, the task of sifting through gift options ignites. There are numerous gift ideas out there to pick for the kiddos in your life. From different colored toys to the latest books to new games, there are endless options out there to choose from. Yes, we made another list for you to ponder and look through, BUT the holiday wish list includes the things for young coders and for those who need that spark to code.
Coding Critters MagiCoding
Age Range: 4+
MagiCoders Coding Critters brings to the table a creative, sensorial and magic-filled perspective to coding. The MagicCoders series has two options to cast your child's imagination with, Blazer the Dragon or Skye the Unicorn. Each of these characters comes with a 22-piece pet playset where you can design your own coding challenges. For example, you can code Blaze the Dragon or Sky the Unicorn to follow a ball, dance, or turn their horns into a volcano or rainbow. This is a great playset to teach kids spatial awareness, sequential logic, and basic coding skills.
Elegoo Smart Robot Car Kit
Age Range: 13+
The Elegoo Smart Robot Car Kit uses an Arduino board, and will help teach programming, hands-on electronics assembling and robotics to your younger and older teenagers. The robot is composed of a microcontroller, sensors, motors, LEDs, a reset button, and many pins that your kids can use for input/output. In addition, the kit also includes 24 kinds of module parts, including auto go, obstacle avoidance (via an ultrasonic sensor) and a line-tracing module (via infrared photoelectric sensor). The robot kit comes with an infrared remote control, but can also be controlled via phone/tablet (Android or iOS). This is definitely a fun one for the kids who are into building and tinkering.
Bitsbox - Coding Subscription Box
Age Range: 6 - 12
Bitsbox sends out a box to its subscribers each month with fun and programmable material in the box. Kids have the opportunity to learn simple coding commands to create cool apps by copying and modifying apps and then downloading them to their smartphone or tablet. Each box contains a full-color booklet with between 12 and 20 apps to code. Kids type in these lines of code on Bitsbox’s virtual tablet on its website. As they type the code they see the app coming to life before their eyes, and once they finish they can download the app on their smartphones/tablets and share it with friends and family. You’ll also find other goodies in your Bitsbox each month including trading cards, posters, stickers, and a mystery toy.
Apps range from simple two-liners to full-on games with graphics and sound effects. The language that kids are typing is simple Javascript/HTML5.
Code & Go Robot Mouse Activity Set
Age Range: 4+
The Robot Mouse Activity Set is a cute and fun way to develop coding enthusiasm and critical thinking skills for young coders. Whether it’s in a group or done solo, kids will program the battery-driven mouse to find the cheese. Through gameplay, the activity provides a basic introduction to the concepts of coding, including step coding and logic.
The flexible kit comes with 16 plastic base pieces, 22 plastic maze walls, 3 tunnel pieces, 30 double-sided coding cards, 20 Sequence cards to plot and track the mouse’s path to the cheese, and a multilingual activity guide. This is a great toy to start the spark for your child’s coding journey.
Coding Board Games by Youth Code Jam
Berriables
Age Range: 7+
Berriables explores the use of variables in computer science by declaring and then actively changing them throughout play. In a computer program, a variable stores information, like a score or a value or a color. In computer science, the value of a piece of information may change during the running of a program. This game explores the use of variables by declaring and then actively changing them throughout play.
Boolean Express
Age Range: 9+
Boolean is a card game that teaches conditional logic. Logic helps computers make decisions. In this game, players will evaluate statements that contain logical and comparator operations. A Boolean value has only two possible values: true or false. In this game, you’ll evaluate the statements on the logic cards based on the playing cards drawn.