mBot - One Robot per child

Being the geek that I am, when mBot announced its kickstarter campaign, I had to get in on the action. I ordered 3 of the $49 mBots, one for each of my kids (ages 6, 9 and 12). My hopes were to get my 9 year old and 12 year old inspired to pursue more than just playing games on their electronic devices. My hopes are that buy the end of summer they will have spent a little less time on the ipad and create a few of their own custom programs.

The mBot is programmed using mBlock, a version of Scratch.

There are many reviews out their for the mBot and the one robot per child mission.

The mBot instruction manual and software installation went smoothly. I was able to help all three kids build their robots in under 30 minutes. (ok, I built the 6 year old's robot, and barked instructions at the other two.)

Installing the app on an iPhone and iPad was simple. Next up is learning and teaching the kids to program. I'm starting with this instructables article, then I will delve into the tutorials on the mBot site.