Two apps for EYFS/early computing

 I have been playing with a couple of new apps this week that, in my view, lend themselves nicely to early computing.  In old money they fit in well with modelling and simulations, in the new curriculum children will be using logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs.

The first one I have looked at is Toca Robot lab - it's another lovely app to add to the Toca family. First you select different parts and build your robot.

  

Then you take your robot on a test flight. There are lots of things to move and crash into and three stars to collect on the way, before you hit the big magnet. This takes you out of the area you have been whizzing round and gives you the opportunity to change your robot. You get a lab test report at the end showing how many stars you collected.  

I would love to see this app being developed a bit further so that maybe they use on screen controls to move their robots, or maybe some areas that they have to learn to avoid etc, to provide a bit more challenge for our able children. A nice little app tho - I'll try and get an opinion from a wee one about it!

The second app is a great little builder app called Build and Play 3D, by Croco studio. There are 15 classic toys for children to build and you can't go wrong assembling them because the model rotates and the parts snap into place. 

Once you have built your toy, you take it out and test it!

Using simple controls on the screen you can simulate a real life situation (in terms of EYFS of course!) I think it's a great little app!