FOLLOWING IN DADDY’S FOOTSTEPS: EARLY CODING WITH OKIDO WHICH WAY? GAME

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Okido Which Way? Game: We were compensated in return for coverage. However, all of our opinions are genuine and unbiased as we want you to have faith in our reviews when you read them.

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Coding. Gav is a senior [read: grumpy] software engineer and so when I hear the word coding I think of all of the times he’s told me talking about his job would bore me when I’ve asked, and all of the times his friends have been merciless and decided to try and fill me in on just what they do down there at IBM when I haven’t asked, at all.

Nevertheless, I have three boys who love OKIDO – and I know they love it because I can sing the theme tune. I use that as a rough measure of a toy’s popularity if it’s a licensed brand. I can sing Okido pretty well.

STEM LEARNING FOR 4-8 YEAR OLDS

The Which Way Game is aimed at encouraging and promotion STEM learning for children aged 4-8 and as two of my three boys fall into that category, we felt pretty well suited to it. The box has a little handle on the top which I really liked as I can now store it neatly. It’s light and inside the box are the following items:

• The Okido Playmat – a huge magnet-sheet. This is warped in the middle due to being in the box and so we left it for a day under some large books to flatten out.
• A little Okido Doodle car with on/off switch
• 16 magnetic tile pieces – square and rectangle
• Spining Wheel for Missions
• Instruction booklet with score chart
• Spare Batteries [I love you, Okido].
• A mini screwdriver which fits the little car [I love you even more, Okido].

The game is very simple. On the magnetic game board, which is split into a grid, are different destinations. These destinations are featured on the spinning wheel and each is either an easy, medium or hard mission featuring one two or three destinations. When the wheel is spun, children need to think like coders and plot the shortest course for the little Okido car to travel to fulfil its mission.

We broke it down into steps so that there was no immediate laying of tiles and screaming at each other over who was right.

EARLY CODING WITH OKIDO

We did it in this order – spin, spot, plan, code, test. Try saying that five times in a row. So firstly, the boys took it in turns to spin the wheel, then we identified the destinations on the map that we needed to reach. They then looked at the tiles they had and planned it out. When they were happy they had enough and which way they were going, they laid the tiles [coding it] and then sent the little Okido Doodle car over their route to see if it worked.

WHAT WE THOUGHT OF THE WHICH WAY? GAME

We loved it – there was alot of discussion between the three boys and their cousin Violet as to where they should cross the river and whether they needed to cover the little bit of path which was drawn on the mat in places or whether they could just use that as a bit of track and save a tile.

The only issues we encountered were that the car’s little track came off a fair few times but not during actual use, and we wished that there were more tiles in the pack. They’ve asked to get the game out a few times now, so that’s a ringing endorsement -and we’d love to have a playing mat to use to keep things from getting boring, but it’s a great concept and fun on a rainy day – just remember to keep it flat!