The Best Bee-Bot Alternative: The Tale-Bot Pro

The Bee-Bot is a well known, much loved educational robot aimed at helping teachers deliver world class learning experiences to young children. It virtually created the category of educational robots, and was the aid of choice partly due to the lack of alternatives. Specifically designed for ages 3-5, it’s a tool that works exceptionally well in facilitating delivery of the outcomes set out in the early years learning framework.

When it was first released, the Bee-Bot ticked all the boxes laid out by the early years learning framework; the ideal educational aid for delivering play based learning and helping teachers develop children’s social and emotional skills, communication and language abilities.

But, the Bee-Bot isn’t exactly new, and many teachers and educators are looking for a Bee-Bot alternative. They’re looking for something new and improved that continues to deliver exceptional outcomes while also being diverse, offering a wide range of cross-curricular activities. In our humble opinion, the Tale-Bot Pro is exactly that; the perfect Bee-Bot alternative.

Tale-Bot Pro vs Bee-Bot: At a Glance. 

The Tale-Bot Pro, by Matatalab. 

Just released in Australia, the Tale-Bot Pro is already proving very popular around the world, with children from Singapore, Belarus, Estonia and more excited to use the cute little robot. It’s a spiritual successor to the Bee-Bot, and improves on it in every way. Still offering the fundamental coding command features that make these robots so excellent for teaching computational thinking and problem solving, the Tale-Bot Pro offers more features, a bolder and brighter design, and better value than ever before. 

The award winning Matatalab Tale-Bot Pro is a game changing robot for early learners on many different levels. Although inspired by the Bee-Bot, it’s designed from the ground up and meticulously researched, the Tale-Bot Pro ticks all the boxes of robustness, accessibility and pedagogy. A true STEAM product, using the included maps and activity cards the Tale-Bot Pro can be used to teach not only coding, but mathematics, science, art, music and language in ways that are proven to be engaging, interesting and inspiring for young learners.

The Tale-Bot Pro can be used by children to engage in explorative and story-based learning, where teachers can act as observers and facilitators rather than instructors. The Tale-Bot Pro is designed to encourage children’s natural curiosity, creativity and inquisitivity and channel that into enjoyable, fun learning experiences. 

It captures the essence of play based learning, offering children a fun, safe environment to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and try again, again and again until they succeed. Through this, kids can learn and improve their coding, storytelling, and social emotional skills along with the critical 4 C’s of 21st century skills; Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking. 

Is the Tale-Bot Pro a good alternative to the Bee-Bot?

Look, we’re not going to pretend we don’t have a clear preference between these two educational robots. The Bee Bot might be the original, and the founder of the category, but the Tale-Bot Pro simply improves on it in every way. Not only is it objectively more engaging, offering more functionality and therefore more options for education, but it’s quite simply better value in most situations.

Instead of offering an ‘impartial’ comparison of the two products, using categories that favour the Tale-Bot Pro, we’ll instead offer the reasons that we think make the Tale-Bot Pro so exciting. 

1. Kids simply adore the Tale-Bot Pro

Everything about the Tale-Bot Pro is designed to delight. Even the box is wonderfully well thought out and looks fantastic. Teachers reported that their kids thoroughly enjoyed even the unboxing process, and were engaged by the designs and the thoughtful packaging. 

Further, the design is significantly different from the original Bee Bot; with Matatalabs opting for a more colourful, exaggerated design with bigger eyes and brighter colours. The wing attachments enable teachers to change the shape of the Tale-Bot Pro, to keep things fresh and interesting or to differentiate between multiple products used in the same lesson. 

The Tale-Bot Pro also has a clear advantage in functionality over the Bee Bot, and that’s its recording and playback function. In every classroom given Tale-Bot Pros, teachers reported that their kids absolutely loved hearing their own voices played back to them; that it kept them engrossed and completely engaged. They also loved the dancing function, a splash of personality and fun that makes the Tale-Bot Pro endearing. 

The modern world is full of digital noise, distractions and electronic devices whereby modern children are spoiled by different gadgets and gizmos. With such stimulus everywhere they look from the moment they open their eyes, children become desensitised to such noise. But as teachers in all of our focus groups found, the robot is able to surprise, delight and engage them—effectively holding their attention. 

Perhaps a big part of the Tale-Bot Pro’s ability to hold children’s attention is the feedback provided after every action. With the robot’s sequence indicator flashing after every completed movement and showing the kids where it is in its sequence, plus the announcement at the end of the sequence, children are constantly delighted. 

2. The Tale-Bot Pro is intuitive and easy to use—for students and teachers

Straight out of the box, the Tale-Bot Pro is ready to go, and with the included instructions and intuitive design, it’s incredibly simple to get started with. The product itself is clearly labelled and designed well, so there’s nothing in the way of excellent education. 

The focus classroom in Minsk, Belarus, found that the constant novelties and various stories [included in the Tale-Bot Pro package] were bright and interesting in each new lesson. They found it was not only simple to use and accessible to everyone, but also the capabilities of the robot allowed teachers to foster their student’s creative imagination and qualitatively master the techniques of algorithmic thinking, the basics of programming. 

“But for a child, all this is an exciting game.”

This single quote from Ms. Olga succinctly demonstrates the value of the Tale-Bot Pro; play based learning in its purest form. She also reported that as the children play, during the ‘game’, they are constantly interacting, which contributes to their development of communication skills. Children were constantly learning to negotiate and plan the game, distribute roles and functions between themselves, take into account the wishes of the other players, act in concert, notice difficulties, work in a team, exchange information, help each other and more. 

3. The Tale-Bot Pro can be used for a huge variety of lessons, subjects and styles

The included play mats enable teachers to use the Tale-Bot Pro as an intermediary to deliver lessons across the curriculum, from teaching students about animals to early years maths, language and more. There’s also a blank mat, with stickers that the Tale-Bot Pro can recognise, for teachers to create their own lessons and activities, and for students to write their own adventures.

At its most fundamental level the Tale-Bot Pro teaches children coding. That is, it teaches them to think in logical sequences and pre-programmed commands. Forethought, and the ability to think computationally is a very important skill for children to learn, and recognised in the early years learning framework. But more than that, the Tale-Bot Pro can be used to consolidate their knowledge through the provided accessories, acquire new knowledge and continually improve their social and emotional skills. 

The Tale-Bot Pro is also incredibly versatile. Not just with the breadth of learning resources provided with the unit, but with its potential to be adapted to all manner of lessons and learning. By adding layers of complexity, the Tale-Bot Pro can be used to deliver more advanced lessons to older students, and add fun and excitement to lessons based in other areas of the curriculum. 

In Estonia, the focus classroom used the Tale-Bot Pro in activities dedicated to Christmas; they used the robot’s drawing function, with felt tip markers attached to the sides they used the coding functions to program the robot to draw simple images of Joseph and Mary, consisting of simple shapes. Even the modification of the robot was a lesson, adults showed the kids how it was done, then encouraged them to assemble it independently.

In a single lesson, children were able to expand their cultural knowledge, practice fine motor and mechanical skills, think computationally and express their creativity. These same concepts were also applied to different learning areas, including language; with the children practising their Estonian (their native language being Russian) using the recording and voice saving functions. 

4. The Tale-Bot Pro is all-inclusive. One price, all the accessories

Many of the competitor robots on the market, with the Bee-Bot being one of the worst offenders, require you to purchase everything separately. The unit is purchased individually, then every educational resource is an optional add on. While this can lower the initial investment, in truth it adds unnecessary costs and complexity to what should be an exciting, delightful learning resource. 

It can be difficult to know which resources to purchase, and often hurts the teacher's ability to effectively leverage the robot to its full potential. With the Tale-Bot Pro, everything you need to deliver world class learning and enthral your students is included. With multiple activity mats, robot attachments, command cards and more, there are hundreds of potential lessons right from the moment you open the box. 

With just the included accessories, and all at an incredibly reasonable price, the Tale-Bot Pro can be used to deliver lessons to children from as young as 3, and has been effectively used to deliver lessons to children as old as 7—with older education certainly possible. The Tale-Bot Pro’s complexity, and the complexity of the lessons, is easy to vary; meaning simple lessons for younger children and more advanced concepts for older. 

The Tale-Bot Pro: Truly a great alternative to the Bee-Bot.

Here at CD Soft, we’ve earned a reputation over the years for delivering fantastic products to educators across the country, and for sharing information and knowledge without pressing an agenda. We firmly believe that all classrooms are different, and all teachers’ education styles require different products, and we don’t allow bias to get in the way of that. We want to offer you the very best products that will support you to deliver great education in your unique style. 

But the Tale-Bot Pro, we believe, is truly an exceptional product. Exceptional for both its value, and its versatility—two attributes that make it suitable for every teacher tending to the education of our early learners. 

In our humble opinion, the Tale-Bot Pro is an alternative to the Bee-Bot that beats it in every category, and would be an asset to every early learner’s classroom. 

For more information, please contact us today.