Robot Turtles: A board game to teach programming to preschoolers

[steuard]

I've been sharing links to this all over social media since I heard about it earlier today. "Robot Turtles" is a board game project on Kickstarter by Dan Shapiro (a fellow Mudder). From the looks of it, it's a fun game that's designed to teach kids (3-8 years old, he says) some basic programming concepts along the way (and that gives the kids the chance to be in charge of the adult playing with them: always fun). It sounds like there are multiple layers of complexity, depending on what a given kid is ready to handle.

Have a look! It's rocketed past its funding goal in the day or two that it's been out, and it sounds like the game design and logistics for production are pretty much set.

(While I'm at it, what are some other good board games for the preschool set? Bonus points if they're sneakily educational like this one.)

Comments

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

I'll have to take a look; thanks for the pointer.

In terms of games for that age group: I've had luck recently with Monster Factory, though it sometimes degenerates into just building monsters with the pieces instead of actually playing the game. It's hard at that age, because children have such different interests and gaming-relevant maturity. Games that handicap well help; I've had fun playing Go with my children, though that's probably not suitable for most preschoolers.

[robbbbbb.livejournal.com]

King of Tokyo. My two boys have a screaming good time playing this one, and it doesn't really matter if they win or lose.

I'm also having a lot of fun playing Battlelore with my oldest. It's just on the edge of comprehension for him right now, but he's rapidly getting better. He beat me by a good card draw last week, and he felt so good doing it.

Really, anything that has activity and allows for good choices is fine. Their strategy sucks at that age (really, any age up until about 8-10), but just the act of doing something fun with the "big people" has bonuses.

[kuddliphish.livejournal.com]

I am huge fan of cooperative games for playing with kids. Max is very popular with the under 5 set in our house--the makers of Max have a bunch of cooperative kid's games that are usually quite good, and involve some strategy. The key for me in enjoying a kids game is for it not to be utterly random. Corvus wanted to play Hi-Ho Cherry-O over and over today, and while it is fine for counting and fine-motor stuff, the unending pure luck nature of the game is maddening. We also played Sequence for Kids with Raine a lot when she was little, though the boys haven't been as much into it--again it's got just enough strategy to be interesting.