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Kids just don’t know how lucky they are these days!

The best coding apps and robots for kids

Botley, The Coding Robot From £60 learningresources.co.uk

The award-winning Botley is a simple robot, designed for children 5-9 years old. You don’t even need an iPhone or iPad, as you can use coding cards to control it. It can follow lines you draw on paper, and use sensors to avoid obstacles.

LEGO Mindstorms EV3 £299 lego.com

Shop around, as prices for the EV3 vary (£200£300). It’s a great kit, capable of building several different types of robot, and includes smart sensors that you can program and control using the EV3 app for Mac and iOS devices.

Meccano MeccaSpider £100 meccano.com

There’s a wide range of Meccano robot kits, mostly £100-£200, but the MeccaSpider is our favourite. At 19cm high, 41cm wide and 46cm long, it’s enough to give you nightmares, and the Meccano app includes some built-in games, too.

Osmo Coding Game Kit £70 playosmo.com

The Osmo Gaming Kit is a great learning toy that includes a special iPad docking station, along with three games that focus on coding, drawing and physics. You can expand it with other games, including Coding Jam for music.

Swift Playgrounds Free bit.ly/swiftplgr

The Swift Playgrounds app (iPad only, but also completely free) was introduced by Apple in order to help young children – typically ages 8-12 – to get started with programming. You can also use Swift to program some of the robots Apple sells online and at retail.