Top Stories
For the most of the last ten years, the public discourse surrounding…
There is nothing concerning about a twelve-month-old sitting in front of a screen. They are observing. Maybe something vibrant, musical, and…
A little child looks at her mom while holding out a…
A family of four has dinner at a kitchen table in…
Editorial
The GUSTO researchers were not taken aback by the discovery that early…
About Toddlyfun
The idea behind ToddlyFun, a free online platform, is simple: kids should not have to deal with random, noisy, or too much screen time in their early years. All of the games on this site were made with one group of people in mind: toddlers, pre-K kids ages one to five, and the parents and teachers who want to know what those kids are learning while they play.
There are more than twenty free online toddler games organized into eight different categories on the platform. Some of these are swipe and move games, click and tap games, drag and drop games, and simple puzzles. Each group is made to fit the stage of development of a young child, not just what looks fun on TV. When a one-year-old learns that pressing a button makes a cow appear, it’s very different from when a four-year-old works through a shape-matching puzzle. ToddlyFun takes that range into account instead of making it flat.
The games themselves have themes that kids their age naturally connect with. There is a reason for picking farm animals, sea creatures, colorful dinosaurs, matching socks, hungry hippos, glowing fireflies, and dessert puzzles. Little kids can stay interested in these pictures and ideas because they make them feel something. Every time you tap, swipe, or drag, something happens right away—a sound, a movement, or a burst of color. That instant feedback is built into every part of the platform and is how very young kids start to understand cause and effect.
Parents and teachers of young children are at the center of how ToddlyFun thinks about its users. The games don’t need complicated setup or reading, and parents only need to open a browser to play them.
Kids can run around and explore freely, and adults can be sure that the space is safe, quiet, and not overstimulating in the way that some entertainment platforms are. There aren’t any hard-to-understand menus, annoying alerts, or content that takes kids somewhere they didn’t expect to go. As shown, the item you receive is made for little hands and minds that are eager to learn.
You don’t have to download anything to use the platform on your computer, tablet, or phone. It’s easy to control games, and the experience is the same for everyone in the family, no matter what device they’re using. There are a lot of kids for whom ToddlyFun is their first real experience with computers, and the platform knows that. The goal is for the first time someone sees a screen to be fun and easy to handle, not scary.
You can use ToddlyFun for free. That’s not a limited-time offer or trial; it’s because the platform believes that good early learning tools should be available to all families, no matter where they live or how much money they have.
There have been more than 3,000 hours of work put into making this happen. In the little things, like how a puzzle piece clicks into place, an animal sound plays at just the right time, or a child coming back to play again and again, it shows.
Insights
Latest
Researchers have spent decades observing how toddlers develop social skills in the observation rooms of Yale’s Child Study Center. By today’s standards, the equipment is really basic:…
Advisories from the Surgeon General are not laws. They don’t have enforcement mechanisms, they don’t have legal force, and they don’t force anyone to alter their parenting…
Count the amount of applications that call themselves “educational” in the children’s area of any app store. There are a lot of them. The phrase can be…
In 2018, France took a significant step when it outlawed phones in classrooms for pupils under the age of fifteen. There was a law. It was obvious…
Over 16 million copies of Ring Fit Adventure have been sold. For more than ten years, Just Dance has been a mainstay in living rooms. Families that…
Put your hands over your face. Take a moment. Watch what happens to the infant in front of you when you move them aside and say “boo.”…
The majority of discussions around kids and screens center on what kids are seeing, how long they are watching it, and what device they are using. The…
Pixar has always been adept at making grownups cry over items that appear to be intended for younger audiences. The scene with the incinerator in Toy Story…
The goal of the GUSTO study was not to render a decision regarding iPads. More than 1,200 children were chosen from Singapore’s public hospitals starting in 2009,…
The relationship between the iPad and the working parent is one that practically everyone has, but no one really anticipated. The child wakes up at eight-thirty, a…
For a long time, the stereotype of the average gamer—a adolescent in a dimly lit room with a headset on and an energy drink close by—has been…
