How it works
No Timer, No Buzzer: Why Our Games Are So Quiet
There is no countdown, no losing and no sound on this site. Those were choices. Here is the thinking, and exactly how the stars are worked out.
If you have used other learning games with your child, StarSlate may seem rather plain. Nothing ticks. Nothing explodes. There is no voice saying "Uh-oh!". That is on purpose, and since you are trusting us with a few minutes of your child's attention, we would like to explain our reasons.
No timer
None of the twenty games has a clock.
Speed has its place. Eventually we want a child to know that six and four make ten without stopping to think. But speed is the result of understanding and practice. It is not a way of producing them.
A countdown changes what a child is doing. They stop thinking about the question and start thinking about the clock. Some children enjoy that. Many do not, and for an anxious child a timer can turn a subject they were beginning to like into one they dread.
We would rather a four-year-old took thirty seconds, counted carefully and got it right.
No losing
A wrong answer on this site does very little. The button your child tapped fades and gives a small wobble. A line of text says, "Not that one. Have another look." Then they try again. The question does not change and nothing is taken away.
They can keep trying until they find the answer, and when they do, the game says "You found it!" and moves on.
This is deliberate too. A young child learning to count will be wrong a great deal. If every mistake brings a harsh noise or a lost life, the lesson they learn is that trying is risky. We want the opposite: have a go, look again, find it.
No sound
There is no music and there are no sound effects.
Part of the reason is practical. Games get played in waiting rooms, on buses and beside a sleeping baby. A silent game can be used anywhere.
The other reason is that we want you to be the voice. With no narrator, somebody has to read the question aloud to a child who cannot yet read it. That somebody is you, and the conversation that follows is where most of the learning happens.
Eight questions
Every game is eight questions long. A row of dots at the top shows how far through you are, so a child can see the end coming.
Eight is enough to practise something properly and short enough to finish in two or three minutes. A game that ends gives you a natural moment to stop, or to say "one more and then we are done".
How the stars work
At the end of a round your child gets one, two or three stars. The rule is simple and we think you should know it.
What counts is how many questions were answered correctly on the first try.
- Three stars: seven or eight right first time.
- Two stars: five or six right first time.
- One star: four or fewer.
So there is always at least one star for finishing. Nobody ends a game with nothing.
The site remembers the best result for each game, not the latest. If your child earned three stars last week and two today, the chart still shows three. Stars are never taken away.
With twenty games and three stars each, the chart on the home page counts up to sixty.
What the stars are for
We thought hard about whether to have any reward at all. Stars can become the point, and a child chasing stars may start guessing quickly.
We kept them because young children like to see that they have finished something, and because the chart gives you a quick picture of which games have been tried. A game with one star may be worth doing together. A game with three may be one your child has outgrown.
If the stars start to matter too much, ignore them. Praise the thinking: "You counted really carefully."
Why the questions repeat
Some games have only a small number of possible questions. Make Ten has nine. Play it a few times and the same ones come round.
That is intended. Number pairs, letter sounds and shape names are learned by meeting them again and again. The order changes each time, so it cannot simply be memorised as a sequence.
What we left out
- No accounts or names. A child cannot type anything in.
- No links to other websites inside the games.
- No rewards for coming back daily.
- No characters or storylines. Nothing to distract from the question.
The trade-off
A quieter game is less exciting. A child used to louder apps may find these dull to begin with. We accept that.
What we are aiming for is a calm couple of minutes in which a child thinks about one idea, gets it right in the end and stops. Among HTML5 games for young children, that is a less common goal than it should be.
If you think we have got something wrong, or a question is unclear or unfair, please tell us. The address is on the contact page.