  Our Computer science k-12 education research group and the educational toy
company Quercetti have been collaborating together to design and manufacture
toys that help stimulate and consolidate so-called computational thinking. This
approach is inspired by methods already consolidated in the literature and
widespread worldwide such as the Bebras tasks and CS-Unplugged. This paper
describes two smart toys, their design process, educational activities that can
be proposed by teachers exploiting the two toys, the evaluation's results from
some teachers, and finally feedback and reviews from buyers. The main
activities proposed by these toys leverage visual coding through small colored
physical items (e.g., pegs and balls) to deliver the unplugged activities to
young users.
