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Oops, Osmo did it again. After wowing us with their art that comes to life and then a money counting pizza game, they decided to do a deep dive into important math concepts with their new line of hands-on, magical math games.
Thank goodness, because when we started homeschooling, I was most concerned about the math piece – since my son is a natural at it and already advanced and I’m in the “if I can’t use a calculator, I’m not doing it” group.
So, when Osmo reached out and asked if we’d like to try out their new Math Wizard and the Magical Workshop game, designed for 6-8-year-olds in 1st or 2nd grade, it took me less than two seconds to say:
Math Wizard and the Magical Workshop:
Math Wizard and the Magical Workshop is another incredible masterpiece, with a whole new array of characters, activities, adventures and challenges focused on addition and subtraction, counting and place value, comparing numbers, and word problems. Exactly the math standards we should be working on.
And, like most Osmo games, they are surprisingly intuitive for youngsters. In fact, my son was zipping through the magical lands and challenging characters to a card dual in about 2.5 seconds.
For the addition and subtraction piece, Osmo has created a captivating spell casting game where you use ones and tens pieces cleverly disguised as ingredients on a potion mixing mat to cast spells like shrinking and growing characters. The spell recipes, or addition and subtraction problems, start out simply and increase in complexity within 120.
For more advanced math practice, you can challenge characters to a card dual where you race against them to answer math problems first, earn gems, and purchase special cards you can use to outsmart your challenger. Just wait until you see your child discover that they can earn the ability to steal their challenger’s gems. It’s priceless and makes them completely forget that they are practicing math problems increasing in complexity in the process.
The third game is a creative way to teach the number line and addition/subtraction, with adorable characters who go up and down based on the number of balloons they are carrying.
Osmo just figures out ways to make complex concepts extremely easy and fun to learn. I don’t know about you – but I wish Osmo was around when I was a kid. I might actually like math.
How To Use Osmo Math Wizard:
If you’re new to Osmo, they use an iPad tablet or Fire tablet set in their Osmo base with Osmo app to bring their games to life. Check that you have the right base for your tablet before buying and then let the games begin.
With all their games, the red piece that goes on top of the tablet reads the gameboards and pieces to help the game come to life. With all of their games, I have been astounded with how quickly and accurately this works.
Math Wizard is another phenomenal game, but with the potion mixing game, it does take a few seconds to read the small ones pieces accurately. If you have a hasty mathematician, you may need to be there to remind them to wait a few seconds for the pieces to accurately load in the app before mixing their potion.
Or, you can set the difficulty level up higher so that the questions just take them longer to do – which will give the game more time to register the pieces. This is the only small glitch I noticed with any of the games on this one and I haven’t seen it happen with any of the other Osmo games we have tried.
In fact, the math challenge and the respond lightning fast, so my son will sometimes go back to the potion game simply because he has more time to think and needs a little bit of a brain break.
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We absolutely love all of our Osmo games, but the ones that are helping us check off the math boxes in our homeschool journey are winning a special place in my heart.
If you’re looking for interactive, engaging, innovative learning games that will captivate your kids, you’ve got to check out Osmo.
Here are a few more of our Osmo reviews. Highly recommend all of their games:
Have you tried Osmo? Tell me your favorite Osmo game in the comments below.
Have a fabulous day,
E
