Osmo - Genius Words - Ages 6-10 - Interactive Letter Recognition, Phonics, Sight Words & Spelling - For iPad or Fire Tablet - STEM Toy (Osmo Base Required - Amazon Exclusive)

Excellent product good value for money

I ordered this back in may and have just got round to using it however it is saying that I need to purchase the actual game on the app

As a teacher, I am really saddened that this product would even be sold. I bought it for my son who is in the early stages of learning to read. I bought it because I had been impressed with the coding versions. I cannot believe that there were any educationalists involved in the creation of the app that goes with the letters. The first red flag was that the words used in the app are all in uppercase - despite the letters having both an upper and a lowercase version in the tiles. In the most basic activity, children are asked to identify the starting letter (not sound) of words. A picture is displayed and a voice says the word (with mispronunciation, including guttural “g”s - the way they are pronounced in German or Afrikaans), the remaining letters are shown as well. For example, a picture of a cookie, the word “cookie” is said and “OOKIE” is written on the screen with a blank space for the child to insert the “C”. Apart from the all caps and poor pronunciation, the bigger problem is that children are not identifying the starting sound. So for example, when presented with “shoe”, children should have to identify “sh”. Instead, there is only space for the “s”. Level 1 got boring quickly, so my son decided to try level 2. He literally went from being shown a picture of a chicken and having to identify the “c” as the starting letter (😡 it should have been “ch”) to being shown a picture of a chicken and having to spell the entire word. The first word he was asked to spell was “chicken” - one may think “cat” or “hat” may be a more appropriate starting point. There was absolutely no scaffolding. I think the technology is clever and has great potential but the application is not educationally sound and, in my opinion, does more harm to a child’s reading journey than good.

This is a great way to teach little ones, books are great but this is fun

We already had the coding set and wanted to expand on the collection and Osmo is really fun. My older child helps my younger one to play the alphabets and numbers games on the app.

Kid loves this a lot. Thanks!

I ordered this product for one of my Grandsons. It cost $59.85 delivery here in Brisbane (they live in Melbourne) What I didn't realise is that this is absolutely useless without the Osmo base. I didn't return it as it would cost a fortune with Australia Post, What I intend to do is write to OSMO in the US and find out the cost of the base to make it workable. I think it is a good product but impossible to use without the whole article John Mowat