For grown-ups
In SaySoTots your child gives the instructions and you are the robot. Your child taps big picture tiles in a row: step, turn, pick up, put down. Press Run and the phone shows one tile at a time. Do exactly that and nothing else, even when it is silly. A little map on the screen moves the same way.
Put a sticker on one hand
Before you play, put a sticker (or a little drawing) on the back of one of your hands. There are two turn tiles: Turn to the sticker and Turn the other way. Your child never has to know left from right; they only have to watch which hand the sticker is on. On the little map, the sticker turn is drawn turning one way and the other turn the opposite way. Every errand can be done with either turn.
You can play without the phone, too: print the floor mat (the tiles to cut out, a three-square floor strip, a robot badge for you and a sticker circle) and lay the plan out on the floor.
Three errands to start: fetch the teddy, shoes on, and set the table for two. If the errand does not work, the app says what the robot did, and your child finds the tile to change. That is debugging, and it is the first rung of code.
Fix the plan gives your child a plan with one wrong tile. Your child finds it and swaps it.
The word for it
When a plan works, SaySoTots says the word for what your child made: a plan a robot follows is called an algorithm, and asks them to say it back (al-go-rith-um). The finished plan stays on screen as numbered pictures; tap one and the map shows that step again. Ask your child to point at the step where the robot picked something up.
This is the classroom exact-instructions game (the sandwich challenge) and the CS Unplugged tradition. Everything works without reading: every tile has a picture and a button to hear it. There is no score and no timer, and nothing leaves this device.
What it never does
- No accounts, no ads, no tracking — anything kept stays on this device.
- No streaks, timers to beat, points to chase or leaderboards.
- No chat, and nothing anyone types is sent anywhere.