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I think "following the instructions" is a worthwhile skill in itself, and our 4 year old really picked it up.

But you're right, once she learned to follow the instructions exactly, she is having a tough time being creative. At the moment she's kind of obsessed with instruction-following. So there are definitely two sides to it.

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I agree, following the instructions is a critical skill to develop.

What I meant was that you can be creative with these solutions. As for the programmable mouse, my son drew his own mazes on paper in the end and placed his toy cars and other things for the mouse to catch.

The basics are still there that he need to program the mouse and understand the fundamentals, but allowed for enough creative freedom to keep it interesting.

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