Robot Turtles is a new board game designed to teach coding to pre-schoolers. It has quickly become our favorite game. The premise is that each player controls a turtle card and the turtle's goal is to get to it's jewel. Barriers can be set up to make the game more complicated for some players and easier for others. One person plays the role of the "mover" and moves the turtles when other players provide commands (cards that move the turtle forward or turn it left or right). As players get better at the game, other things can be unlocked (like function frog cards that allows the players to create small functions that are called).
Our 3.5 year old loves the turtle game. She likes controlling the turtle and she also likes being the mover and making the turtles follow mommy and daddy's commands. Her very favorite part is when she gets to yell "bug!" and she sometimes makes intentional mistakes just to do that.
I don't expect that she will be programming her own apps anytime soon, but I do like that this game involves strategy, planning, and spatial thinking.
And, of course, it doesn't hurt that it reminds the adults in the house of learning logo in the early 80s.
