I don’t pretend to know anything about electronics (I know nothing) and I don’t really partake in the whole “crafts” thing (too much glitter and glue) but THIS IS COOL.
There are two things I like about this:
- It’s a great way to get kids making, learning, being generally awesome in a day and age of ‘seven years old is totally old enough to learn how to code!’
- This is a totally gender-neutral toy. I could use this as an opportunity to launch into a passionate debate about gender-specificity in children and children’s toys (because I am ever so passionate about it), but I won’t. All I have to say is that if my son wants to wear nail polish, HE CAN. If he wants to play with Barbies, HE WILL. (Side note: I do actually have a son and he likes to wear nail polish sometimes, and he also loves playing with my old Barbies. Hell, so do I.)
Anywho. It basically comes in two levels – easy and advanced – with six different characters. Then it comes with these things called ‘conductive thread’ and ‘electronic components’ (magic gobbledy-gook). It comes with a plastic sewing needle (I know what that is) too and then you basically sew all these things into these characters and they do stuff like light up or make music and stuff. I know I’m doing a terrible job at explaining it because me and anything remotely science is like “blah blah black hole blah”, so here’s the link to find out more.
NB: This super cool project is in funding stage with Kickstarter. So if you want your kids to get smarter than you real quick and be able to rewire your computer and stuff by, like, the age of ten, you probably want to put some money behind these guys. I, for one, know my kid will love this so if it comes to fruition, I’ll be first in line to buy it.
