I hope this finds everyone well!
Can you guys believe that the Holidays are right around the corner? Time to start thinking about Christmas gifts for family and friends.
And just in time, when people like you and me try to come up with ideas of what to gift this Christmas, I had the opportunity to test a new ALEX Toy named Future Coders Poppin' Pictures for children 4+.
The ALEX Toys Future Coders Poppin' Pictures is a fun picture creator toy. It features many different colored, about quarter-sized, plastic tiles that children put on an 8x8 grid. Included are 20 pixel image cards that show easy to follow patterns of symbols on one side, where each symbol stands for a color and the child has to copy the same pattern by placing the right tiles on the grid, and when he/she is done they can turn the card around to see if they created the right image shown on the card.
While this is a neat and interesting idea, I don't think it really teaches much about coding. My children had more fun being creative and making their own images with the colored tiles instead of doing the same cards over and over.
A major flaw we encountered is the suction pencil tool, which is supposed to be used to put in the tiles and to help remove them from the grid. The pencil was too difficult to use for my children, since you have to press in and hold the button, then hold the pencil tool onto a tile and then let go of the button to create suction. My children got tired of trying to use this pencil tool and chose to dump out the tiles after completing an image, which is the only other way to get the flat tiles out of the grid. I like that the grid is the shape of a robot, and that the tiles can be stored in the mouth, and that the lid of this small storage compartment can be used to hold up the image cards when open. The storage compartment is rather narrow and it is a little bit difficult to get out the tiles. While my children enjoyed this toy at first, it didn't keep their interest very long. This toy is recommended for age 4+, but I think that this toy should be for kids 5 years and older, who are more responsible and understand to be careful enough not to let the tiles fall to the ground, because it's definitely not fun picking up close to 200 tiles off of the floor.
Disclaimer: I received this product complimentary for testing and reviewing purposes only. All opinions expressed here are my own.
