Is the Think & Learn Code-a-Pillar (Original) worth buying?

When the toy itself can’t reliably execute the sequence your kid programmed, it stops being a learning tool and starts being a frustration machine — skip it. If I had to do this whole thing over again and I could only buy one item from this list, I’d buy the Osmo Coding Starter Kit for a kid under nine and the Kano Computer Kit for a kid nine and up. Everything else is bonus material. The one piece of advice I’d give any parent going down this road: sit with your kid the first few times. Not to take over — to watch. You’ll learn a lot about how they think, and they’ll feel like the thing they’re doing actually matters because you’re paying attention. That part doesn’t cost anything. If your kid has tried any of these, or if you’ve found something that worked that I didn’t mention, drop it in the comments. I’ve got a birthday coming up in four months and Rosie has already started leaving browser tabs open on my laptop. I’m going to need all the help I can get.

Note W000333. Filed.