I am a huge advocate for the Osmo system for iPads. I first introduced Osmo on this blog post here.

The company just recently release a new game that I was very excited about – Numbers. I received it in the mail and opened my box and automatically thought it was so clever. It comes with digit and dot tiles but the dots only come in 1s, 2s and 5s creating great opportunities for thinking about numbers in parts.

Two Fridays ago I visited the grade 1 class at Kidd Elementary and all the students got to give Numbers a try. Suffice it to say, it was a huge hit! The students were asking where they could get the game and I emailed our DRC right away for the classroom teacher to get the Osmo kits into her classroom!

The grade one students had some great comments on the game:

“We use our brains to make the numbers.” – A

“I like that there are numbers to choose from.” – W

“I like that you get to make the numbers and that you get the fishes.” – K

“There’s not enough 1s to make 11 so you have to think of a different way.” -W

“You can think really hard.” – K

One drawback I noticed on Friday for classroom use is that you have to acquire “points” to open up new levels. This is great when a child is using it at home but for classroom use, it would be preferable to allow for different entry points for different students. I might be missing this accessibility somehow so am going to look into this further.

At this point, until I gain access to the higher levels, I can’t really comment on the other tasks available but it looks like there’s great possibilities for thinking about decomposition and composition of numbers, counting and addition.

~Janice