Shadow Match shows the outline of something, filled in solid white with no detail, and four ordinary pictures. Which of them has that shape?
What your child is learning
To match a silhouette, a child has to ignore colour and detail and attend only to the outline. That is a visual skill with real uses. Telling letters apart depends on noticing shape. So does recognising a word at a glance, reading a map, and finding the right piece in a jigsaw.
It also encourages looking at the features that make something what it is. The elephant has a trunk. The giraffe has a long neck. The key has teeth.
How to help
Ask what stands out. "What can you see sticking out of this shadow?" A long neck, a pair of wings or a handle is usually the clue.
Run a finger round the outline, then round each of the pictures.
Rule things out. "Could it be the banana? No, the banana is curved and thin." Working by elimination is a useful habit.
Some of the twenty-two pictures are easy, such as the umbrella and the star. Others have less obvious shapes, such as the apple or the car. If two of the choices are similar, compare them carefully.
Name the pictures as you go. It is a painless way to build vocabulary: "That is a crab. Look at its claws."
Taking it further
Make real shadows. On a sunny day, or with a torch against a wall, hold up toys and guess which is which.
Draw round objects on paper and match them back later.
There is no reading in this game at all. It is one of the few HTML5 games on the site that a three-year-old can play entirely alone once shown how.