For parents

I am trying to make a children’s game for all kinds of children. There are not many apps made with special needs children in mind, so I wanted to share ours. It has a calm mode, sounds and effects you can switch off, and a dark mode it starts in, for children who are sensitive to light.

I want to keep it that way: free, advert free, no subscriptions, so that everyone can enjoy a game together with their children. It can be played with no connection at all.

Put it on the home screen

Theo Leo Land can sit on the home screen with its own picture of Theo, open with no address bar and no browser buttons, and keep working with no internet at all. Nothing is installed from a shop and no account is needed.

Keeping her work safe

 

Everything is kept on this device, in the browser's own offline store, and a second copy of the last good save is kept beside it — so a half-finished save can never wipe the good one. Tapping the button below asks the browser to protect that store from its own tidy-ups, which is what stops a save disappearing after a quiet spell. For complete peace of mind, save a backup file now and then: it holds every child on this device, it opens straight back into the app on any device, and because it is a file on your own computer or phone, nothing the browser does can lose it.

Ways to make it easier to use

Bigger text grows the whole page together, so nothing is cut off or left behind. Bigger buttons gives every button at least the 44 by 44 pixels the accessibility guidelines ask for at their strictest level. Movement follows the device's own “reduce motion” setting unless you override it here. Switch scanning walks through the buttons on screen one at a time, and any key on a keyboard — or a switch plugged in as one, or the wide bar along the bottom — chooses the highlighted one. Tap the words to hear them lets her tap any line in the app — a heading, a hint, a name — and hear it read out while it lights up, which is how a child who cannot read yet still finds out what a line says.

Writing the letters

Three things about Letters & sounds › Write it can be set to suit her. A left-handed child covers the letter with her own hand when the box sits on the left, so the writing hand moves the box to the other side — the same left-handed mode the handwriting apps have. The pale letter underneath can be taken away once she knows the shape, which turns tracing into writing from memory. And how exact decides how close to the line she has to stay: forgiving for a first go or for unsteady hands, exact when she is ready to be neat.

Fewer rooms on screen

Thirteen rooms is a lot to look at. Switch any of them off here and they leave the shelf at the top, and the Today row stops asking for them — handy for a child who is overwhelmed by choice, or for an afternoon where you want only letters and numbers. Nothing is deleted: her coins, her stickers and everything she has made stay exactly where they are, and the moment you switch a room back on it is all still there.

 

How hard the games are

Every game keeps its own level and moves on its own. Play & learn has five levels; each of the letter games and each of the number games has three. On Follow the child the app keeps a running average of how often she is right and steers each game towards about 85% right — the accuracy at which learning is fastest, rather than the 100% that feels nice and teaches little (Wilson, Shenhav, Straccia & Cohen, Nature Communications, 2019). A running average settles on the right level far sooner than counting streaks does (Pelánek, on mastery criteria), so that is what decides, with three right in a row kept as a fast lane.

It comes down as readily as it goes up. A game that is too easy produces boredom and a game that is too hard produces frustration, and both end the wish to carry on (skill–challenge balance study). After two misses in a row on the same question Theo simply points at the answer instead of letting her sit in it — a mistake followed straight away by the right answer is one of the better ways to learn something (Metcalfe, learning from errors). What changes is the size of the numbers, the length of the number line, how close together the two groups are, how many choices sit on screen and how many spare letters are in the tray. Nothing is ever locked or taken away from her, and the reading levels stay under your finger, not the app's.

Choose Easy or Normal to pin everything instead — some children need it never to get harder.

When she outgrows it

Big kid mode is there for a six or seven year old. It raises the ceiling rather than changing the games: the spelling game moves off three-letter words on to sound teams and the common exception words from the Year 1 list — said, come, some, one, they, there, friend, school — the ones that cannot be sounded out and have to be learnt by heart (national curriculum). Adding moves past twenty to two-digit numbers plus ones and plus whole tens, with sticks of ten to lean on. Reading sentences starts at the longer ones. Nothing is taken away, and you can turn it back at any time.

More than one child

Each child gets their own town, their own coins and stars, their own stickers and their own Today strip — kept separately on this device and never mixed together. They swap by tapping the name at the top of the page. Changing a name here is safe; removing a child deletes that child's town on this device, so keep a save code first if you might want it back.

Today — the same few things, in the same order

The strip across the top always shows the same five things in the same order, so she can see what is happening now and what comes after it. A step is ticked off once she has spent a few minutes on it, and finishing all five earns a handful of coins. It never nags, never counts down and never takes anything away — she can still play whatever she likes, whenever she likes.

How the playing is going

This is worked out on this device from the saved game, so you can see what she enjoys and what she has learned. Nothing is sent anywhere and nobody else can see it.

📋 Copy this summary

Privacy — the short version

Nothing about your child leaves this device. There is no account, no sign-up, no e-mail address asked for, no advertising and no analytics of any kind. I do not receive her name, her drawings, her answers, her play time or anything else, because the game never sends them — it has no way to.

What is kept, and only on this device: the saved town (coins, stars, stickers, her character, her rooms, what she has learned), each child's name and animal face as you typed them, and your settings. It lives in this browser's own storage for this site, and nowhere else. Clearing this browser's data for the site, or using Delete everything below, removes all of it at once — there is no copy anywhere for me to delete, because I never had one.

Three things are worth knowing plainly. The read-aloud voice is the one built into your own device or browser, so the words are spoken by it, not by me — some browsers do that on the device and a few send the text to their own maker's service, which is their behaviour and not something the game controls. You can switch reading off completely. Second, the page itself is served from a web host, so — like every website — the host briefly sees the request that fetches the page, including the device's internet address; after that first load the game runs with no internet at all. Third, the support and e-mail links on this page lead out to PayPal and to your own mail app, which is why they sit behind the sum you just solved, where a child cannot reach them.

Written for the grown-ups, in full, with the dates and the legal wording:

🔒 Read the full privacy policy

Support the updates

A tip is a thank-you, never a purchase. It buys nothing, unlocks nothing and is promised nothing in return — every part of the game is already here, free, and stays that way. What comes in goes on what it costs to run and to keep making it better.

☕ Support with PayPal

Send me your ideas

If there is something you wish the game had — a game, a story, a subject, a word she is stuck on, or anything that annoys you about it — write to me and it goes on the list for the next update. I read everything myself.

✉️ glenn-rune@live.no

Writing to me is entirely your choice, and nothing in the game asks a child for an address or sends anything anywhere on its own.

Thank you

Thank you for trying out my game, and for being an awesome parent. We all want our kiddos to be happy and enjoy their time, so I hope this game puts a smile on yours as well. Ideas and feedback are very welcome — if you send a tip you can add your idea as a note, and it goes on the list for the next update.

Reading the stories together

The twenty‑four stories in Letters & sounds › Read with Theo, spread over three reading levels, are written the way beginner books are written: only sounds she has already met, four to seven words a page, and a picture that shows exactly what the sentence says. Theo says one word at a time and the word lights up as he says it, so her eye lands on the word being spoken. She can tap any single word to hear it alone. There are deliberately no games or animations inside a story — those pull a child away from the words rather than towards them.

Two things make a much bigger difference than anything the app can do on its own:

• Read the same story again. Re‑reading a familiar story is one of the most reliable ways young children pick up words, so a repeat earns the same coins and star as a first read.
• Talk about it. Each story ends with one open question and no right answer. Ask it, listen, then say a little more back than she said — if she says "the bus", you say "yes, the big red bus went up the hill". Then ask her again. Those four steps are the whole technique.

Good questions to add yourself: what is happening here?, what do you think happens next?, has that ever happened to you? Pointing at each word with your finger while she reads helps too — it teaches her that one spoken word means one written word.

The welcome tour

Theo shows a short four‑step tour the first time the game opens, pointing out dark mode and calm mode. You can play it again any time.

Show the tour again

Language

The whole interface can be Norwegian instead of English: the tabs, the buttons, the games, Theo’s chat bubble, this page for grown-ups and the reading voice. One thing stays English on purpose: the reading lessons in Letters & sounds teach English sounds, English rhymes and English sight words, so translating them would break what they teach.

A Norwegian voice has to come from the device, exactly like the English one: iPad or iPhone: Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › Voices › Norsk (Bokmål). Android: Settings › Accessibility › Text-to-speech › install Norwegian. Windows: Settings › Time & language › Speech › add a Norwegian voice. If there is no Norwegian voice the words still appear on the screen, the app just stays quiet.

The reading voice

Everything is read out loud in English. If the only voice on this device speaks Norwegian, the English words come out wrong, so the app stays quiet instead and shows the words on the screen. To fix it, add an English voice to the device:

• iPad or iPhone: Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › Voices › English.
• Android tablet: Settings › Accessibility (or General management) › Text-to-speech › install English.
• Windows: Settings › Time & language › Speech › add an English voice, then restart the browser.

Reading out loud: on

English voices found on this device

Let me pick any voice on this device

🔈 Try this voice

The clock and the reminders

The clock in the top corner teaches the time with colours and lights instead of small numbers, and it has a guessing game. While the game is open it keeps count of the playing time: after half an hour it suggests a drink or a snack, and after an hour it suggests a stretch or a little break, then every half hour after that. You can switch the reminders off here.

Reminders: on

Saving pictures

Painted pictures, drawings from the drawing school and characters all have a Save to my device button. The picture is saved as an ordinary image, straight into the Photos app or the Downloads folder. Nothing is sent anywhere — it never leaves the device.

Coins for trying things out

Everything that costs coins can be won by playing, but if you want to look at all the rooms and the locked outfits straight away, add some coins here. This button lives behind the grown‑up question on purpose, so a child cannot reach it.

🎁 Add 500 coins

The secret stash

A hidden tab, only for you. It shows all 28 fairytale animals, fairies and squishy toys that the Daily gift draws from, and lets you hand one over, take one back or make the daily present ready again. It sits behind this grown‑up question, so a child cannot reach it.

✨ Show the secret stash tab

What calm mode does

It silences every sound and the read‑aloud voice, stops the confetti and the bouncing, and keeps the screen still. The app starts in dark mode for light sensitivity; the sun button switches to the bright theme, and the speaker button turns sound off on its own if you want music without the effects.