"It's a balance between traditional craft activities and engineering."

A programmable "Cricket" promises to help children not only learn about computing, but also express themselves creatively, letting them build anything from a talking night light to a xylophone made out of fruit.

To create a robotic craft project — for example, a xylophone made out of fruit — a child creates a program on a computer using the accompanying Pico Blocks software.

Next, pieces of real fruit are strung together. Wires connected to the Cricket are attached to one end of the xylophone and another wire tapes on the fruit chunks.