Detective Dot Megapack Review
Reviewed by Melody Floyde
I was really pleased to be asked to review the Detective Dot Megapack as it sounded like it would be right up my 8-year-old son’s street. The Megapack is a personalised gift for children which lets them go on their own coding adventure. I was curious as to what this would involve as the only coding my son has done to date has been at school on a computer. He does use his tablet at lot at home and I was optimistic that the Detective Dot Megapack would encourage him to do other educational activities without using the tablet.
The Detective Dot megapack was sent to me in a plain envelope, inside this was a brown paper package marked “Top Secret” addressed to my son from the Children’s Intelligence Agency (CIA) which it said contained “official documents”. It also said that it was “not for grown-ups” which I was a bit apprehensive about impeding my ability to write a review if I wasn’t allowed to see the contents of the package!
After opening the package, I then sneakily dropped the brown package inside our letter box and called to my son to say he had a delivery that looked important. When he picked up the package he was so excited and ran straight up to his room to open it in private. He was shut in his bedroom for quite a while before I went up to find out what the package had included. Luckily it turned out that he was allowed to share the information with a trusted adult i.e. me!
I was really impressed with the contents of the pack which were really clever and detailed and very realistic. There was a personalised letter to my son telling him that he had been identified as being an ideal agent for the CIA and outlining his duties. It also told him what his membership pack included, namely a CIA Membership card; Six missions to complete; some stickers to use on mission reports; some CIA business cards to give to his friends to recruit them and a Detective Dot story book.
My son was really eager to get started on the Missions. There were six of these all printed on glossy A5 sized cards, each focussing on a different spy skill. Mission 01 was all about sending coded messages and my son had to come up with his own secret code after looking at the example of “pig latin”, he did struggle with this a bit so hasn’t completed this mission yet, but I think when he sits down and concentrates on it a bit more he will come up with a great secret code.
Mission 02 was more up his street as he had to design a Spy Gadget – he got stuck into this task coming up with drawings of many different gadgets.
Mission 03 looked at “If Statements” and my son was tasked with coming up with his own “if statement” which he did really confidently and came up with one for his spy gear storage chamber!
We haven’t yet moved on to Missions 4-6 but they look like they will be really interesting for my son to get stuck into and will teach him some useful skills
The other main part of the Megapack was the Detective Dot book. This is a paperback book about Dot who is also an agent for the CIA, and a story about her mission to investigate Shelly Belly a teenage trillionaire. The first 17 chapters are the story itself and the rest of the book contains information and activities around the CIA and coding. The book is lovely quality and the text is clear and easy to read with lots of illustrations. My son has enjoyed reading it so far but hasn’t yet finished it so I don’t know what the outcome of Dot’s mission was yet.
I’m really impressed with the Detective Dot Megapack as it’s something different for children and is both educational and fun. It teaches them really useful coding skills whilst keeping their attention by focussing on them becoming spies for the CIA which has really appealed to my son. I’ve been so pleased that he has sat down and spent a fair amount of time reading the book and completing his missions and is keen to finish the set and become a fully-fledged CIA agent!
This would make a really great gift for a child and the fact that it is personalised makes it even more special.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £18.99
For more information or to buy visit www.detectivedot.org.
