Tangible play: Osmo Coding with Awbie

If you haven’t yet heard of Osmo then you’re in for a treat.

Are your kids always on the iPad and you would rather that they were doing something more educational at the same time as having fun? Then this award-winning game system will change the way your child interacts with the iPad and iPhone by being able to have ‘hands on play’.

Until recently, Osmo has only been compatible to use with iPads and I always felt it was a shame seeing as we no longer have a working iPad. As I never particularly used it myself, I’ve never felt the need to replace it only for my children to use and ultimately be a little heavy handed with, for the price.

However, this has now all changed since Osmo launched a base that can be used with iPhones! Not so great for my iPhone but great for the boys being able to see what all of the fuss is about. As it is also used with my phone, it also means that they can’t play it all of the time and that when they do, they thoroughly enjoy it.

The boys were sent Coding with Awbie to try out. It features coding blocks so that kids get to experiment and explore coding solutions in a fun and ‘hands on’ way.  It’s aimed at children between the ages of 5-12 years old, so it’s targeted well for the ages of the boys, being 8 and 5 and both computer mad.

They are becoming something absorbed with games and YouTube and I was keen for them to try something that would help them break away from their current game formats.

Coding with Awbie is basically about programming but at a level that kids can understand, which is genius.

Within the box, there are 8 Number Tiles, 4 Walk Tiles, 2 Hand Tiles, 1 Jump Tile, 1 Repeat Tile, 1 Magic Tile, 1 Caution Tile and 1 Play Button

The task is to direct Awbie around the screen on a hunt for strawberries and each block acts as a coding command. The more they collect in one go, the higher their score will be. Your score is rewarded with leaves which you ‘plant’ in another part of the game (which you can go to at any point). The tiles control whether Awbie moves up, down, left, right, jump, grab to the sides and repeat.

As it’s designed with children in mind, the blocks are really easy to handle and they snap together with the use of magnets.

The boys have both really enjoyed working their way through the games and they both have usernames so that they can continue where they last left off.

As well as Coding with Awbie, we also downloaded the Masterpiece app which enables drawing. On the app they can choose to draw from a range of categories and you can even use your own photos.

The boys found it fascinating that they could see their hand on the image on the screen, so they were drawing whilst looking at the screen. This is brilliant for hand eye coordination and requires lots of concentration!

Nb. We were sent Coding with Awbie and an iPhone base in return for this review. All views and opinions remain entirely our own.