Gift ideas for keen programmer / coder?? Please :)

[Blewitt]

Hi,
My DD is in yr 6 and really getting into coding and programming etc. she recently had a lego robot day at school as part of their G&T programme and LOVED it so much she has asked for one for her birthday next month. Trouble is they are ridiculously expensive. I have no idea about any of these sorts of things can anyone recommend anything else along those lines I might be able to get her? She also does Raspberry Pi as an activity at school and loves that too.
Hope someone can help.
Thanks very much.
Blewitt.

She might enjoy this book of Computational Fairy Tales.

Sorry I can't help with the robot idea though.

Sign her up for the Young Rewired State Festival of Code. Ds did it in Y7 and absolutely loved it.

Raspberry pis are cheap, about £35 for basic kit and you can get robot arms etc
DS had a very old version of lego mindstorms (the robots) and it is worth the money but as you say very expensive, have you looked at second hands ones?

I was going to suggest a robotic arm too. They're not very expensive.

The Pi is good, but also look at Scratch which is a free programming language for kids scratch.mit.edu/

Thanks, some good ideas. Definitely going to get computational fairy tales, thanks mrsCakes.
Bruffin, what is so good about the Mindstorms? I have a DS who is very into lego but younger so I think it would get another use if I bought it? Second hand also go for about £200 on ebay.
Robot arm looks good too.
She has definitely done scratch at school, maybe something we could get at home too.
I just do not understand what Pi is, suppose I really should get her to try and explain it to me!

Its very versatile. You can programme things to a fraction of a second. If you look on you tube there are some amazing projects people have made ie rubik cube solving. The age range is from about 10+ but mindstorms is used in 6th forms and universities as well. Nowadays it connects to aps on phones but the one ds had was a remote control with a lead.

Mindstorm lego.. Its expensive but absolutley fantastic

Raspberry pi
or if they are practical too, an Arduino (DH builds automata with his)

Just asked my dgeek, who suggested getting your dd her own domain.

That's an interesting idea, thanks tzibeleh's dgeek :)
Also like the look of the Rewired festival too. Thanks

I didn't know about Mindstorms, but this link gives other items connected with it, so I don't if it could be built up from different units:

shop.lego.com/en-GB/MINDSTORMS-ByTheme

. . . and did she see the BBC RI Christmas Lectures, a series of three 1-hour lectures on these sort of topics. The third one includes Lego in an unbelievable role; and various robotic items:

www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures

My dp (computer programmer) has a raspberry pi and builds complicated things with it (that link all the technology in the house together). My dd1 (14) has one too, and she's just using it for learning simple programming under DP's tuition. It is very versatile.

But not really as cheap as it seems, you can't do very much just with the basic kit, dp and dd have already bought all sorts of other bits and bobs to add in. I've been a bit at the various additional costs (especially for DP who has many computers already).