On Sunday, February 1st, young visitors of Città della Scienza will discover Cubetto, a playset created by startup Primo to teach children the principles of programming. Children aged 4 to 7 years old will learn the basics of coding through a wooden robot whose movements can be governed by the children themselves thanks to a physical interface and a set of colored blocks that serve as instructions. “The novelty of this approach is in the choice to hide circuits and mechanics without losing the magic of the technological environment”, says Sonia China, digital education coach. “Cubetto is totally made of wood, a natural material that appeals to children and that is already known from kindergarten”.
Cubetto was born thanks to a fundraising program on the KickStarter platform, that raised over $ 750,000, allowing the company - based in London but founded by Italian entrepreneurs Filippo Yacom and Matteo Loglio - to develop the set, already produced in 10,000 copies and that will be officially launched this year at the Toy Fair in Nuremberg. Città della Scienza’s young visitors will get a preview of the little wooden robot that will teach them the importance of coding. Another important feature of the robot is its Arduino‘s soul, that makes the project completely open source, which means that you can know every feature and reproduce it independently. The aim is to encourage the teaching of coding from an early age, as requested recently by US President Obama.
