As a mum of two girls and a lover of technology, introducing Kairi and Naminé to the world of coding is really important to me. With their dad a gamer, there is always help on hand, but with my little knowledge, I often wonder if I've taught them the right thing. So when Learning Recourses contacted me and asked if they could sent us out Botley The Coding Robot kit for review, of course I snapped their hand off!



The kit we were sent was Botley The Coding Robot Activity Set and as we looked at his box, I already knew the girls were going to love him. (by the way, we decided Botley was a boy, no idea why!)

 

Botley has 2 settings; the first is the coding mode where your child uses the remote to program instructions in. In this mode you can help Botley get from A to B, use object detection to move around objects and pop Botleys arms on to make him push the ball around.



The other mode allows Botley to follow the black line on the back of the mats. A really exciting feature of this mode is that you can use a thick black marker and create your own line for Botley to follow! As a mum, I love this mode, it's a great way to get your children to practice their fine motor skills and start writing/recognising shapes, letters and numbers.

 

Botley comes with 77 pieces! Including; flags, cubes, Easy-to-use Remote Programmer, Detachable Robot Arms (which Kairi loves!), 40 double sided Coding Cards, Six double sided boards along with sticks, cones, balls and a goal! There is just so much in this pack, we were glad we had the handy instruction guide to help us start.



With such a massive kit, there is so much you can do with Botley. As a family, we loved the coding mode. Kairi (5) sat on the floor with Botley and I gave her a series of commands of we used the parts to create an obstacle course. When Kairi struggled, we used the really handy cards to discuss and plot down directions before entering the code. For me this was a great way to know whether Kairi was understanding what we were doing or not.

 

Naminé (3) loves building courses for Botley, actually the sticks and cubes have become her favourite toy at the moment. Although we aren't giving her puzzles to solve, she's really enjoyed using the remote and you can see her working out how to make him move.

 





 

If you want to see Botley in action or find more about, check out our review below!

*We went sent Botley in return for a review, all opinions are our own, we really love him - plus he's so cute!