As times have changed, at the time of my parents the most sophisticated toy was tin and for it to work it had to be wound, in mine came the batteries, the colored lights and the sounds of synthesizers and now, we curl the curl and we develop machines that can be programmed by a four year old like the cousin, a programming interface for children.
Primo is a physical programming interface adapted to children between four and seven years old and that teaches them the logic of programming without the need to read manuals or be a little wise. It consists of a set of shapes, colors and spatial concepts to teach the logic of programming through a tactile, pleasant and magical learning. Cousin makes learning something magical and fun.
The game set
Cousin consists of three elements:
Cubetto, the robot friend
It is the moving piece of the game and consists of a small engine encapsulated in wood to make it more friendly.
The board
It is the interface from where we will give the orders to cubetto, and it is also made of wood.
The code, a set of instruction blocks (forward, left, right and function tabs )
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It is a set of wooden chips that represent a programmable order for our cubetto.
How does Primo work?
The purpose of the game is to guide our robot friend, Cubetto to his home or place where we want to take you.
The robot will execute the script or instructions that we place on the board, in the order in which we do it. Playing with Primo, children experiment with the instruction series. As there is no single way to reach the selected site, nor a single way to go the way, we can see how different children present different solutions to the same problem.
The sequence of instructions is constructed by placing the different tiles in the gaps of the board according to what we want Cubetto to do, so we will place instructions to go forward, turn right, turn left, etc. so that our friend arrives at his house. Once we have placed the complete sequence, it is only necessary to press the start button to check if we have indicated the path well and thus playing the children can see how to build a logical line of orders and how it works on something real.
The green function block
Within the different command blocks there is a special one, called a function block, which is represented by a green circle. This piece has the particularity of executing the command line that precedes it as a programming subroutine and once learned the concept makes the game even more interesting if possible It is possible to keep it moving indefinitely.
Cousin is a crowdfunding type project which has been presented in Kickstarter, the site for creative projects and with which you can still collaborate to get one. Also as a CPU or control unit of all this carries a small Arduino that you can modify at your leisure as it is an open project.
I leave a video so you can see how it works.
