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Tale-Bot Pro is a fun little robot and has similar features to the popular bee-bot robots... but has a whole lot more to offer.
They are advertised to suit age 4 and up. I have most success with using them with 6-8 year-olds They offer screen-less learning and are great for teaching STEM concepts like directions and sequencing. |
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What I like about them...
What I don't like about them. The activities that come with them are great, but rely heavily on sound. It means if there is a lot of noise in the classroom, they are difficult to hear. It usually doesn't make that much difference to the level of enjoyment... I just don't like seeing kids struggle. I decided to make some of my own activities that did not require sound as much. |
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I bought 12 tale-bots which I think is great for classes up to 24 kids. They are fun to share one robot between two students.
I also bought 2 x 6 port chargers,. 
I divided a tub with a small piece of wood then covered it all with bubble wrap for safe transportation and easy charging. I used cable ties on the charger cables to help them stay untangled.
Charging is easy and takes less than two hours to get a charge that apparently lasts for 2-4 hours of play. |
Although each robot comes with a couple of mats. I recommend buying a few Activity Box sets. They come with a lot more mats and a sticker book that I found really useful for making my own resources. Somehow, the robot can sense each sticker and even say what's on it! For example: It says,"banana", when it drives over the sticker of bananas.
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A lot of the mats have a similar format.
Always place your Tale-bot on the top left corner (in this case the face under "Zoo Visit"). The face on the top left of every board, somehow indicates to the Tale-bot which activity board you are using. Then you usually have a choice to watch the instructions or code or creation
If you choose "instructions", the robot will basically tell you a story as it passes over all the desired images. If you choose "Code" it will tell you to go to certain squares by coding it yourself. If you choose "Creation" then it's basically free play. You decide where you want to go and the robot reacts accordingly. |
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Some of the boards are more simple. You always start by placing the robot on the top left face.
Then sometimes you need to make a choice. (Like placing your robot on a shape or number)
And then it will tell you to go to a "starting point". The starting points are in the corners and say "go!"
Then sometimes you need to make a choice. (Like placing your robot on a shape or number)
And then it will tell you to go to a "starting point". The starting points are in the corners and say "go!"
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The best way to work out each board is just to sit down and have a play. Maybe that's an activity you could run. For example, if you have a Grade two class, get your kids to work out how to use the board and teach it to a Grade 1 student.
The boards come folded up. It didn't take me long to get tired of folding and unfoilding the boards, so I made a pocket out of two pieces of coreflute. I stuck one edge together with double-sided tape. Then used velcro to be able to open and close it.
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Coreflute available in most hardware stores
I use heaps of Core Flute in many of my robot workshops.
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I made my own boards
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Using the sticker book from the activity box, I created a grid on some core flute with electrical tape.
Each square is 10cm x 10cm I bought some simple game-spinners on eBay. How to play. 1) Place your robot on any white square. 2) Use the spinner to decide which square you need to go to 3) If you land on the right square, collect a gold coin. 4) See how many coins you can get. 
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Most of my board games involve core-flute, electrical tape and laminated pictures.
Kids love trying to get to the next checkpoint and sometimes even record their voice so it says the number when it arrives and/or even does a dance.
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I wanted to make mazes, so again I used coreflute and electrical tape. I decided to make the walls of the maze with the tape they use for door seals. It works great, because it is thinner than the tape, and it is easy to cut to size and easy to stick on. I placed some numbers in chronological order onto the maze so that kids could reach checkpoints and even re-position their robot before attempting the next checkpoint.
I actually worked out where the walls would go first and then where the numbers would go, on a computer. Then copied the design to the boards. 
If you can open Photoshop files, (.psd) you can use the file below to make your own mazes. You don't print the file. You just use it so you know how to create your maze by looking at it, then duplicating it on the actual board. If you can't afford Photoshop I recommend Pixelmator Pro. (But it only works on Macs) For a one-off cost, it does just about everything Photoshop does.
Here is a PDF of all the maze numbers/checkpoints and other tiles I stuck on my maze. Free for you to use.
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Tale-bots are Duplo compatible
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I bought some Duplo Lego on eBay and the figurines have been really popular. You can place them on a board, and the robot needs to collect them. Lots of fun!
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Robot Man Video
If you go to my YouTube Shorts you will see some of my Tale-bots in action