OSMO: Intellectual Game For Kids

Are you wary of the time consuming games your kids invest time in? Here is a good news.

Osmo, a collection of kid-friendly gaming apps and peripherals attached to the iPad aims to change the way tablets are used for gaming by expanding play beyond the screen. Using a small mirror, Osmo redirects the iPad camera's view, opening up the area in front of it for play and freeing control from the iPad's screen. According to Tangible Play CEO and co-founder Pramod Sharma, this makes every game a social experience.

How does OSMO work?

Players select a pattern on the iPad ranging abstract shapes to geometric animals and attempt to reassemble the silhouette with 3D shapes on the screen.

WORDS, Osmo's word guessing game operates on a similar way. Here, players get a picture hint and left to throw letter tiles in front of the iPad as quickly as possible to piece together the correct word. Kids can play one-on-one, but Sharma encourages users to pile into teams and toss letters "fast and furious."

"One is the social and emotional learning," Sharma said. "How do we connect with people? There's a skill required in that. That's fundamental for anyone. In school, they don't know how to teach those kids.

"The second one is creative, out of the box thinking. How do you teach kids to be creative? The theory [from educators] is when you're using a device, or any gaming device, you're creatively always a function of what the device lets you do. The Wii, for example, you can do only a constraint of what the controller is. You cannot go beyond this."

Now you as a parent do not have to worry about the time you kid spends on your iPad. The kid is learning.