Copy the Pattern

What your child learns

• Looking carefully and copying a picture row by row and column by column
• Finding top, bottom, left and right on a grid of squares
• Building familiar pictures from colored squares: a heart, a house, a smiley face, a tree, letters
• Imagining a mirror image (flipped left to right) and a picture turned a quarter turn

How to play

1. Press "Play now". The pattern is on the left (on top on a phone), and your empty grid is next to it.
2. Tap a color, then tap squares to fill them. Tap a square again with the same color to clear it. You can also drag across several squares.
3. When you are finished, press "Done" (if every square is right, the game cheers on its own). Squares that are not right flash so you can fix them, and the rest stays as it is.
4. On a computer: arrow keys move between squares, keys 1–3 pick a color, and Enter or Space fills a square.

For parents

• It starts with a 3×3 grid and one color, then 4×4 with two colors and 5×5 with three; it gets harder as your child gets them right.
• Getting it right on the first check earns a star. A wrong check just lets your child keep fixing, with no need to start over.
• For mirror rounds, stand a small mirror between the two grids so your child can check. For turning rounds, the orange dot shows where the top-left corner of the pattern ends up.
• The palette never puts easily confused colors together (red and green, blue and purple...), so children with color vision differences can play too.