If I am brutally honest the whole concept of STEM and even the word STEM is relatively new to me….I had to google it when I came across it not so long ago and learnt that it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. And STEM is important because all 4 of these areas are part of our everyday life.

That is where STEM toys come in; they educate in these areas in a fun way for children…..and the MIND Designer Robot certainly makes things fun.

So what is the MIND Designer Robot? This cute little robot can be coded to follow instructions to move around and draw things. It helps with the process of learning mathematics, arithmetic and geometry.

What’s in the box?

• 1 MIND designer robot
• 1 double sided board
• 3 felt tip pens
• 10 A3 size paper
• 1 Instruction Manual (however we were missing the instruction manual but we managed to work out what to do!)

Features of MIND

MIND has 3 settings: Free, Edu and App.

Free setting

There is so much to do with the Free setting. You can manually tell MIND which direction to go in by pressing the buttons on the back….or you can use voice control to tell it which direction to go in. However MIND will only respond to a certain list of phrases and not random instructions.

In addition to this you can also tell it to draw together or draw shapes. It can draw some basic things like a tree or a house….and also has a choice of drawing a number of shapes including a trapezium (I had no idea what that was!)

Edu setting

For this setting you have to use the board. Although it is called a board it is in fact a large sheet of paper. On one side you have the Blue Board and on the other side you have the Yellow Board.

Yellow Board – Arithmetic Chart. With this board you have 3 different levels of difficulty; easy, medium and hard. As Bee is only 6 we stayed with the easy level for now. This is a fun game and asked you to direct MIND to a certain number, or counting how many circles are on the board and going to that number…and even asks maths questions such as 7 minus 5. So along with teaching mathematical skills it also teaches you to think about what directions to input to get it to move to the right number.

Blue Board – Escape Room Chart. The blue board is another fun game which we all had a go at. You have to solve quests while using logical thinking. MIND has to be directed to certain objects and then take them back to the shape that needs it….often telling you you need to avoid certain obstacles. Bee did slightly struggle with this but I know with practice she will get the hang of it and it will get her to think more. She was keen to keep having a go and to get it right.

App setting

For this setting bluetooth is used and therefore you must have a tablet/phone that can download the MIND designer app. The app is downloadable on the App Store, Google Play and also available at Amazon. Do check your devices capability beforehand. We used the girls Amazon Fire tablet as I didn’t want them to be using my phone to play with MIND. Using the tablet you can do some coding. I do think this was difficult for Bee right now but as she gets older it would be perfect for her. I can see MIND being one of those toys that will continue to be used.

What did we think?

Both the girls were keen to have a go at MIND (even the 12 year old was desperate to have a play!) They did seem to like the free mode and tell MIND what to do and get it to draw and draw the shapes. And they were beginning to get a bit competitive with the EDU setting. There is so much to do with MIND that I think this is one toy the girls won’t get bored of and due to its Bluetooth technology, MIND’s content is permanently updatable. This Science Museum approved robot is certainly fun AND educational.

Clementoni’s STEM toys do not end at just the MIND robot. They have a range of STEM toys that are fun and educational including Science in the Laboratory.

MIND Designer Robot has a RRP of £49.99 and is available to purchase from Smyths and also Amazon: Clementoni 61595 Clementoni-61595-Science Museum-Mind Designer.

 

Disclosure: We were sent MIND Designer Robot for the purposes of review. All thoughts and opinions are our own. This post contains affiliate links.