*AD – Unpaid Review

One thing I wish I had a much better understanding of is coding. I just don’t really get it, and I think these days, it’s a pretty important skill to have, particularly if you want to go into a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics field). I’m really trying to get the boys interested in – Alex has gone to a club at school a few times which starts off with basic coding, but nothing has piqued their interest more than the Artie 3000 Drawing and Coding Robot.

This cool little dude costs £69.99, and can be bought from the fabulous Learning Resources website. It is suitable for children aged 7 and above, although, with a bit of help, Alex and Ben had fun with it as well. It is worth noting that you do need a tablet or a computer with WiFi to use him. It also requires four AA batteries, which aren’t included.

Setting up wasn’t the easiest task. No, I lie. It WAS easy, but the instructions for doing it weren’t particularly clear which made it a lot more complicated than it should have been. We ended up having to find the website and watch the videos on that to work it out. Once that was done, it was time to put one of the pens (four washable felt tip pens are included) into Artie and start coding.

Again, I can’t say the user interface is the easiest thing to use, and I had to do it a few times to get my head around it before showing Harrison. Once we had worked it out, it was lots of fun. We haven’t tried setting up our own programming just yet – we have concentrated on getting to know the interface and seeing what works and what doesn’t work. I would say to begin with you need some big sheets of paper (or tape a few together, as we did) as Artie does often run off the paper.

There are three cards included, each one with suggested codes to us, and there are some pre-programmed shapes, which we have been using so far. It’s great making noughts and crosses grids for them to play with!

All in all, it’s a great little introduction to coding, if a little clunky to use at times, and most importantly, the boys (and us!) have had fun with it, making it worth every penny!

*We were sent this product free of charge for the purpose of this review. All words and opinions are our own and have not been influenced in any way.