Tiny Hands for teachers
Tiny Hands is free and has no ads, which is why its games turn up in a lot of Google Classroom links. This page is for teachers, teaching assistants and childcare educators who want to know what they are sharing before they share it.
The short version
- The games: nothing to install, no logins. Share the link, children open it, the games start.
- Learn: one free class account. Learn's reading and writing program keeps each child's progress in a Tiny Hands account. A teacher's class account holds up to 50 children: see "Learn in class" below.
- Works on Chromebooks, iPads, Android tablets and any laptop. Most games accept keyboard and touch.
- No ads, no external links inside the games, no chat, no user content. The only outward links are the "Donate" buttons for parents on the homepage.
- No student data unless you choose. Best scores are saved in the device's browser, unless you sign in to a free class account: we recommend one, so each child's progress carries on on any device in the school. Visits are counted with Google Analytics, with its advertising features switched off (in Europe, only after a grown-up allows it), and nothing else.
- Spoken instructions. Every game explains itself out loud (in English for now), so children who can't read yet can play on their own.
- Runs offline once loaded. Useful for rooms with patchy Wi-Fi: open the site once, and the games keep working.
Games by age and skill
| Game | Ages | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Kaboom Keys | 1–3 | Cause and effect, first keyboard contact, ABC mode for letters and numbers |
| Ball Bonanza | 2–4 | Aiming at a goal, tracking a moving object, emotional vocabulary |
| Memory Match | 2–10 | Working memory; seven board sizes from 12 to 36 cards for differentiation |
| Dress-Up Party | 2–5 | Choice-making, clothing and color words |
| Shape Sorter | 2–4 | Shape names, matching outlines, fine motor control |
| Jigsaw Puzzles | 2–6 | Spatial reasoning, persistence; 4 to 24 pieces for differentiation |
| Counting Critters | 3–5 | How many (up to 10), making a number, first adding and taking away, with Otto counting aloud; no words to read |
| Pop-Up Pals | 3–8 | Reaction speed, hand–eye coordination, waiting for the right moment |
| Stack It Up | 4–6 | Timing, counting aloud, coping with a collapse |
| Chalk Art | 2–8 | Fine motor control, tracing shapes, letters and numbers, creativity |
| Sort It Out | 3–7 | Sorting and classifying, recycling, care for the environment |
| Brick Builder | 3–8 | Planning, spatial reasoning, early engineering |
| Melody Maker | 3–7 | Pitch, sequence memory, 30 melodies taught by Rio |
| Spell It Out | 4–7 | Letter-sound links, missing-letter spelling; eight levels from three-letter words to spelling a whole word |
| Tiny Town | 6–10 | Following multi-step instructions, reading short dialogue, kindness |
| Balloon Float | 4–8 | Timing and anticipation, one-button control |
| Rocket Ride | 5–9 | Two-direction steering, momentum, reaction time |
| Gorilla Tower | 5–9 | Timing, planning a route, coordination, bouncing back after a tumble |
| Math Ninja | 6–10 | Number basics with ten-frames and arrays; 20 mental-math strategies taught step by step |
Math Ninja's tricks map well onto mental-arithmetic strategy work: making ten, compensation (friendly numbers), constant difference, doubling and halving, and partitioning are all there, each with a worked example, a guided attempt and independent practice.
Learn in class
Learn is a set of free learning programs for ages 2 to 7. Reading and writing is the first: a voice-guided phonics program where Bubba the whale teaches letter sounds, blending and first words, a few minutes at a time. Numbers, money and music come next.
Learn keeps each child's progress, so it uses a free Tiny Hands account. For a class:
- Create one account for the class and choose "My class" when you sign up. A class account holds up to 50 children.
- Add each child with a first name or a nickname, one by one or by pasting a list of names in the grown-ups corner. That, the year they were born (optional), the picture they pick and their progress is all it keeps. Children never sign in or type an email.
- Children pick their own picture and name at the top of the page on any tablet signed in to the account, and carry on where they left off, in Learn and in the games.
- You can delete a child, or the whole account, at any time. Deleting is immediate. The privacy policy has the details your school may ask for.
Please check that your school is happy for you to use Learn with your class before adding children.
Calm and movement breaks
- Feel: a calm-down corner. Lulu leads a slow breathing exercise, good after playtime or before a quiet task.
- Move: short dance and movement breaks led by Momo, who shows and says every move. It works on a projector, with no camera. Our guide to brain breaks for the classroom has fifteen more that need no equipment.
Their one-minute previews need no account. When they open, they'll use your class account like Learn, keeping only first names or nicknames and progress.
Suggested classroom uses
- Early years free play: Kaboom Keys and Ball Bonanza on a shared laptop at a play station. Both are safe to mash.
- Turn-taking: Memory Match on a large screen, two children flipping in turn. The 12-card board finishes in a couple of minutes.
- Mental-math warm-ups: pick one Math Ninja trick, run the Watch phase on the board, then let pairs do the Solo problems on tablets.
- Music: Melody Maker's Learn Melodies mode on a class piano keyboard, with the whole class singing the note names.
- Early finishers: Tiny Town has no timer or score, so it fills five minutes calmly and stops cleanly.
Sharing a game with your class
Google Classroom. Every game page has a green Share to Google Classroom button near the bottom. It opens Google's own share window: pick your class, then post the game as an assignment, a material or an announcement. Children who open it land on that game with one big Start button, so the youngest don't have to find it among the others. Like every link in Classroom, it opens in a new tab.
Canva. Paste a game's link onto a slide or a worksheet in your design. When children click it in the presentation, the game opens in a new tab.
Any other platform. Link the game's own page, for example tinyhandsplay.com/games/math-ninja/. It describes the game and has a Play button, which makes it the better link for a lesson plan: parents who open it at home see what the game is for. The homepage, tinyhandsplay.com, has all twenty games, and tinyhandsplay.com/learn/reading/ is the reading program.
On paper. The printable sheet lists every game with its ages, what it is good for and a QR code: point a tablet's camera at it and that game opens.
Putting it on a class site
Google Sites, Canvas, Schoology, Seesaw, Padlet, Wakelet, Microsoft Teams, Moodle and most other platforms can show the site inside a page. In Google Sites: Insert, then Embed, then By URL, paste https://tinyhandsplay.com/ and choose Whole page. Elsewhere, use the platform's embed option with this code:
<iframe src="https://tinyhandsplay.com/" width="100%" height="700" style="border:0" allow="fullscreen; autoplay"></iframe>The games play inside the frame. Full screen works where the platform allows it, which is what allow="fullscreen" asks for; where it doesn't, the game simply fills the frame.
If the site is blocked at school
School web filters such as GoGuardian, Securly, Lightspeed and Cisco Umbrella sometimes put any site with "games" in its description under Games and block it during lessons. If that happens, ask your IT team to allow tinyhandsplay.com or to file it under Education. The short version above and the privacy policy answer the questions they usually ask: no ads, no chat, no logins and no student data in the games, no external links inside them, and a class account for Learn that keeps only first names or nicknames and progress.
Accessibility notes
Text is large and high-contrast. Every game works with a keyboard alone, and the touch games have generous tap targets. Every game explains itself out loud, but the sound is never required: the pictures show what to do too. There is no reading required in the games for under-fives.
Questions
If a game does not suit your setting, or you have an idea for one that would, please use the feedback link on the homepage. Several of the current games came directly from teacher and parent requests, including the ABC mode in Kaboom Keys and the change-size button in Memory Match.