It's a great introduction to programming. You have to put in all instructions on the mouse to solve the maze. There's also cards with instructions that you can place on the board to make it even easier.
We also bought an IoT kit from from https://littlebits.com/ when he got older that we started to work on together.
The key here is to do it at a 3-year old level and that you do it together, it's not about finding the right solution or not. Be open to your kid's creativity and don't just follow the instructions.
We bought a starter kit (pretty expensive I know) but my son has been playing with it for at least 1-2hrs a day for a year. They are part of every game he plays, whether it's a car race or playing with dolls.
I think "following the instructions" is a worthwhile skill in itself, and our 4 year old really picked it up.
But you're right, once she learned to follow the instructions exactly, she is having a tough time being creative. At the moment she's kind of obsessed with instruction-following. So there are definitely two sides to it.
I agree, following the instructions is a critical skill to develop.
What I meant was that you can be creative with these solutions. As for the programmable mouse, my son drew his own mazes on paper in the end and placed his toy cars and other things for the mouse to catch.
The basics are still there that he need to program the mouse and understand the fundamentals, but allowed for enough creative freedom to keep it interesting.
https://www.robotshop.com/en/code--go-robot-mouse-activity-s...
It's a great introduction to programming. You have to put in all instructions on the mouse to solve the maze. There's also cards with instructions that you can place on the board to make it even easier.
We also bought an IoT kit from from https://littlebits.com/ when he got older that we started to work on together.
The key here is to do it at a 3-year old level and that you do it together, it's not about finding the right solution or not. Be open to your kid's creativity and don't just follow the instructions.
Also, Magna-Tiles! https://www.lakeshorelearning.com/products/blocks-manipulati...
We bought a starter kit (pretty expensive I know) but my son has been playing with it for at least 1-2hrs a day for a year. They are part of every game he plays, whether it's a car race or playing with dolls.