Disclaimer: We received Detective Dot – The Megapack for the purposes of review. All thoughts and opinions are our own.
If you are looking for something different but interesting for the kids then you may want to consider Detective Dot – The Mega Pack.
Who is Detective Dot?
Dot eats binary for breakfast, logic for lunch and HTML for tea.
She’s a nine-year-old coder on a mission with the Children’s Intelligence Agency – investigate teenage trillionaire Shelly Belly and her global tech empire.
It was lovely to have a female lead in the world of STEM and coding and what also appealed to me is that Detective Dot is a young British-Asian girl tech whizz. You don’t often get Asians as the main character in products and it was nice to see this diversity.
The story is fun with Detective Dot investigating Shelley Belly…with unique items such as farting selfie-sticks and micro-pigs on hover-boards!
So what exactly is Detective Dot – The Mega Pack?
Detective Dot – The Mega Pack is a coding adventure perfect for children aged 7+, mapped against the UK curriculum. Through fun and interactive offline activities, underpinned in computer science, kids learn a range of STEM skills, such as how to protect their identity online and spot fake news – 21st century skills for today’s children.
Bee loves STEM related toys so this seemed perfect for her as she has just turned 7 too.
As soon as the pack arrives it is shrouded by mystery. It makes it clear that the package is only for the eyes of Bee and definitely not for grown ups!
I would share the letter but as it is clearly not for grown ups I will keep the contents hidden…..but in brief Bee is recruited into the Children’s Intelligence Agency!
What is included in the Megapack?
- Detective Dot book
- CIA membership card
- Six STEM based missions
- Personalised CIA Letter
- A CIA Sticker Sheets
- Lifetime CIA membership to online missions and games
Children’s Intelligence Agency
What child does’t want to feel important and this makes them feel like they are highly important undercover agents. The CIA is: …’a secret organisation investigating criminal networks, global mysteries, and rotten teachers.’
To gain the full experience you need to join online at the CIA kids website. Here the children get their own log in code and more missions to complete.
What is unique about this is that once you have completed a mission you can even email/post out the completed mission to the CIA if you wish.
What Did We Think?
Bee absolutely loved the pack! It does make you feel like an agent with your own business cards and a gadget card which you place against your phone/tablet to unlock a secret spy gadget. She couldn’t wait to give out her business cards!
Bee’s reading is advanced so she was comfortably able to read the story but some 7 year olds may need a bit of help, although the language used is relatively simple.
I can see Bee doing lots of the missions over the school holidays and getting really involved with the CIA! And I love that she is improving her STEM skills.
The Mega Pack is priced at £18.99. However if you do not want to purchase the book you can purchase the CIA membership on its own for £7.99. You can find further information about Detective Dot and the products available at https://www.detectivedot.org/.