Healthy Screen Time

Thank you OSMO for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season! For us it is always the busiest time of year. Christmas, New Years, birthdays, vacation and trying to squeeze as much family time with everyone in between it all.

Now, being totally transparent, I am not big on screen time for my kids unless its a good Disney movie or show. My girls do not play on phones and have only used the IPad a handful of times for an online learning curriculum I had subscribed to. But when I first heard of Osmo, I knew this was healthy screen time that this mama could get behind. Osmo is a learning system that works with your tablet. It merges digital and physical play into one all while your child is learning. The magic of Osmo will even bring your child’s artwork to life like animation on the screen of their tablet right before their eyes.

We were gifted with the Little Genius Starter Kit as well as the Disney Frozen 2 Super Studio. When I first saw the package at my doorstep my homeschooling mama heart was beyond excited. If you still a gift for any child in your life, Osmo is the golden ticket.

The Little Genius Starter Kit comes with:

The Disney Frozen 2 Super Studio comes with:

Both Brooke and Olivia cannot get enough of Osmo and with all the hidden learning elements of it and I do not have any mom guilt allowing them to get in some screen time. They love the Costume Party game where they practice their fine motor skills while enabling the concept of spatial reasoning. Plus who doesn’t love playing dress up? Each piece of clothing is so unique and it really gets their creative wheels turning for putting together the perfect look.

My personal favorite of all the games in the Little Genius Start Kit is the ABCs game. It teaches how to build the letters and understand the phonics of each letter. Then once you have constructed the letter, you learn a word that starts with that letter and create a fun picture out of the colorful building pieces. Brooke has a phonological disorder and this game has helped improve her speech and I am so thankful for it. Mo the monster is the the star of this game and knows how to keep your kids engaged.

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The Squiggle Magic game is a close second for me. Watching Brooke and Olivia problem solve with the pieces is why I like this app. At first I wanted to jump in and help them create the picture like on the screen but I quickly realized that they didn’t need my help for this. The best part of the game is once you finish creating your picture, it was come to life right in front of you. Watching the girl’s faces light up is just the best.

The Disney Frozen 2 Super Studio is an additional game to purchase. Both Olivia and Brooke do need my help a bit with this one, Olivia more than Brooke, but that does not take away from any of the fun. This game is all about bring out your artistic side. The instructions are very simple and you pretty much have free range in how your want your creative artwork to be expressed all while learning the basics of drawings.

Within the 5 game apps you child will learn:

• Letter recognition, vocabulary, construction, and phonics
• Creativity and pre-drawing skills
• Cognitive, social and emotional skills
• Spatial reasoning, creativity and fine motor skills
• Critical thinking and problem solving skills
• Visual thinking and experimentation
• Creative confidence
• Drawing basics

The people of Osmo are absolutely geniuses for finding the best way to integrate technology with physical play. Osmo has so many other additional games and we cannot wait to add more to our collection.