Camp provides interactive iPad opportunity

WORLAND - West Side Elementary kindergarten teacher Carla Bryant has provided kids with hands-on interactive learning experiences with the Osmo program in a two day summer camp.

According to playosmo.com, "Osmo is an award-winning game system that will change the way your child interacts with the iPad by opening it up to hands-on play."

Bryant said they currently have six games. "There is drawing, Newton's Law's, numbers and words, coding and tangrams," she said.

Tangrams are where students "arrange wooden puzzle pieces to match on-screen shapes. Animals, objects, humans and more. They can play with a friend or challenge themselves to increasingly more difficult levels as their handiwork lights up with each victory," according to playosmo.com.

"I have the kids rotate through each station," Bryant said.

"They just interact with the iPad. Instead of holding the iPad, they are interacting," she said.

Bryant said that this program hits all areas of learning. The latest program to come out is coding, which is how to get from one place to another.

"It provides the kids with spatial awareness, numbers which is addition, subtraction and multiplication as well as putting numbers together to make a new number with dots. They have masterpiece in which they take any picture they want and they learn how to draw without looking at their hands, just looking up," Bryant said.

Bryant started incorporating Osmo into her classroom when the company first came out. "I bought my own two sets and then last year I got the school system to buy the complete set for just the kindergarten classes. We have had them for about a year," she said.

According to Bryant, she does this program with her kindergarteners all the time. "This program is good for children of any age, even teachers enjoy it," she said.

"This camp is something I just threw together because I love these things," she said.

Bryant said she put this camp together for the kids that have never gotten to experience the Osmo Interactive Learning System. Forty students from all over the school district signed up to take part in this summer camp.

According to Bryant, kindergarten through first grade participated Wednesday morning, second through third grade Wednesday afternoon and fourth through fifth grade Thursday morning.

Bryant is considering an after school program for students to have another opportunity to interact with the Osmo Interactive Learning System.