Fun Indoor Explorations with Osmo Kaleidoscope
To keep learning fun at home, we have worked with our friends at Osmo to make Osmo Kaleidoscope app available for FREE download until March 31st. This is a creative and fun Osmo app that works with everyday objects!
When kids are indoors and looking for interesting ways to explore their world at home, there are some classic kid-friendly tools for investigations at home. Child-sized magnifying glasses, binoculars, reflective mirrors, and handheld kaleidoscopes are examples of tools for open-ended childhood investigation.
We created Osmo Kaleidoscope to join this group of empowering tools for children and to provide new forms of creativity during home-time explorations. When using your Osmo base at home, try these five ideas for indoor explorations with Osmo Kaleidoscope:
1. Healthy Fun:
Contemporary families try to be conscientious about providing healthy playtime, healthy snacks, and healthy tech-use for their kiddos. We find that this special digital/tangible kaleidoscope is a good partner at the kitchen table when busy mealtime prep is happening nearby. Shown here is a set of chopsticks, bowls, apples, and grapes that provide color for a creative kaleidoscope design at the kitchen table.
2. For Animal Lovers:
Many children are both comforted and inspired by animals in their home life. Animal-themed toys, books, trinkets, and playthings help make lively designs when used with Osmo Kaleidoscope. In this design, two players have selected a unicorn stencil for their special exploration. They also try the app’s rotation feature to watch subtle changes that happen at a soothing pace!
3. Time to Reflect:
When we first began developing Osmo Kaleidoscope, the children on our co-design team were quick to learn how much they loved adding shiny, reflective surfaces to their designs. Shown here at a kitchen counter, a family has selected a jewel-shaped stencil and a mosaic of mini-kaleidoscopes. A metallic spoon, ladle, apple, and tape-measure bring extra sparkly details to the effect when viewing!
Perfect Patterns:
Childhood investigations of patterns often include the discovery of stripes, zig-zags, polka-dots, and more as kiddos learn to design and create with flair! When using the various features of Osmo Kaleidoscope children also explore the beauty of symmetrical patterns in their work. The app’s turtle stencil is one of the favorites for use with patterned fabrics, napkins, coasters, and tablecloths.
B is for Beautiful:
Many families love to infuse learning and content-driven investigations into childhood play at home. Adding numbers, letters, book illustrations, and phonics to Osmo Kaleidoscope can help with this effort. Sometimes we like to focus on collections of items that promote letter-sound associations or phonics. The app’s alphabetized A-Z stencil menu was used to select a butterfly shape for this collection of tangibles that each start with the “B-sound.” Simply beautiful!
Looking for more ways to explore with Osmo Kaleidoscope? Here are 7 STEM/STEAM-focused ideas for hands-on explorations with everyday objects.