Weekly Creation Theme: Dinosaurs
This week, create a TinyTap game inspired by the theme “Dinosaurs.” Your game can be about anything: a lesson on extinction; a spelling game (c’mon, spelling “Micropachycephalosaurus” isn’t easy!); a categorization game about carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores; a matching game between species and fossils; an interactive guide to your local city’s museum of natural history … take the theme in whatever direction suits you!
Pro tip: If you want to insert an image of a dinosaur from the web, try tacking “png” onto your image search for higher resolution results, often times with transparent or white backgrounds (that you can remove).
Be sure to save your game publicly and write the theme #Dinosaurs in the game description or title so that the rest of the TinyTap community can play and get inspired by your creation!
The theme “Dinosaurs” is part of TinyTap’s weekly series featuring designated topics.
Weekly Creation Theme: Earth Day
This week, create a TinyTap game inspired by the theme “Earth Day.” Your game can be about anything: a lesson on pollution or environmental legislation; a quiz about which waste items can be recycled and composted; a soundboard of a house with tips for conserving energy (e.g. tap on the window and see a tip about closing windows while using air conditioning, or opening blinds to use daylight instead of artificial light) … take the theme in whatever direction suits you!
Pro tip: Engage your students by flipping the class and having them research and create their own TinyTap games about Earth Day! You can then let the students play each others’ games or even use them in Earth Day activities for younger grades at your school.
Be sure to save your game publicly and write the theme #EarthDay in the game description or title so that the rest of the TinyTap community can play and get inspired by your creation!
Weekly Creation Theme: April Showers
“April showers bring May flowers”
This week, create a TinyTap game inspired by the theme “April Showers.” Your game can be about anything: a lesson on precipitation; a children’s story about rainy day adventures; a math game using rain drops as units to add or subtract; a soundboard with the images and names of Spring blossoms; a jigsaw puzzle with pieces in the shapes of umbrellas, clouds, and puddles … take the theme in whatever direction suits you!
Pro tip: get extra creative and use a separate device (like your phone) to play rain sound effects as background audio in your recordings!
Be sure to save your game publicly and write the theme #AprilShowers in the game description or title so that the rest of the TinyTap community can play and get inspired by your creation!
The theme “April Showers” is part of TinyTap’s weekly series featuring designated topics.
How to create Matching games on TinyTap
Matching games teach children how to recognize commonalities among objects and identify patterns, both important exercises for building organizational skills. In math class, they encourage children to consider different expressions of the same concept (for example, 2+2 and 3+1 both equal 4) and when applied in a language class, matching games offer a fun format for reviewing vocabulary.
While traditional matching games might conjure up images of crisscrossed worksheets or a worn stack of playing cards, connecting two parts of a pair by tapping and dragging on a screen is actually more intuitive for today’s youth.
On TinyTap, teachers can make matching games to correspond with any and every lesson, and students can even make their own matching games to rehearse the material. Scroll down to play a demo matching game and read a few tips for creating your own.
Sample TinyTap Matching Game
Pro-Tips for making a matching game on TinyTap
Identical Puzzle Pieces
Trace puzzle pieces identical in shape and size so that players won’t be able to simply guess the matches according to their fit. Double-tap on the first piece you cut out to get the same shape ready to be moved over the next area you wish to cut out.
Add A Word Bank To Your Page Layout
When designing they layout of your matching page, it’s best to keep an empty section so that you can position your puzzle pieces in a way that won’t obscure the grooves. Compare the following two slides: the puzzle pieces in the first page are arranged in a way that blocks the grooves, making it difficult to solve. The second page has a blank upper-right corner, designed with the scattered puzzle pieces in mind.
Shuffle Your Pages
Shuffle your pages so that they won’t appear in the same order each time players attempt your game. This will help them learn the material, not just memorize its order.
Matching games are great for rehearsing colors and shapes, language learning, assessment activities, and more. Make your own matching game on TinyTap and type #MatchingGame in the description!