About Leafdle

Leafdle is a no-ads, plant-naming game for children aged 4 to 7. We show a real photograph of a flower at the top of the screen — a daffodil, a tulip, a poppy, a bluebell — and put four plant names below it. Your child taps the name that matches the picture. Get it right, score a star. Endless turns, no fail state, gentle pace.

Leafdle is part of the Tadpole Games family. Where Fredle teaches phonics and Flagle introduces the world’s countries, Leafdle introduces the garden — one flower at a time. It pairs a real photograph with the word for it, so a pre-reader can match by picture and an early reader can sound the word out.

Who Leafdle is for

• Reception (age 4–5) — just starting to put names to the flowers they see in the park, the garden, on the windowsill. Two of the four words are usually easy to rule out, so the child still gets to think and pick.
• Year 1 (age 5–6) — building vocabulary alongside early-years science (Plants and Animals). Learning that the yellow trumpet flower is called a daffodil, and the small white one in the lawn is a daisy.
• Year 2 (age 6–7) — ready for the harder names (chrysanthemum, hellebore, delphinium) and the start of botanical-vocabulary noticing.
• Home-schoolers, tutors and grandparents who want a five-minute nature warm-up with no ads and no fuss.

How it works

• A real photograph of a flower appears at the top of the screen.
• Four plant names sit in a 2×2 grid below.
• Your child taps the name that matches the picture. Trumpet-shaped yellow flower → daffodil.
• Right answer? The tile flashes green, a star is added, and a brand new flower flips into place.
• Wrong answer? The tile wobbles red and stays struck-through; the picture stays put, and they can try one of the other three. Endless turns — no losing.

Why a real photograph (not a drawing)

Children learn to spot flowers in the world from photographs faster than they do from cartoon drawings, because the colours, light and shape variations of a real plant are what they’ll see on a walk. Every Leafdle photo is a real botanical photograph sourced from iNaturalist under a Creative Commons licence — the same library that biologists and rangers use to catalogue what they find in the wild.

That ordering matters. Picture-recognition comes first; the word comes second; the joy of spotting the same flower on a real walk comes third — said by the grown-up alongside. By the time your child can read “daffodil”, they already know what a daffodil looks like, and what a daisy looks like, and how to tell them apart.

How to play with your child

• Say the plant name aloud each round. “That’s a daffodil. They come up in spring. Look at the trumpet in the middle.” Repetition is the lesson.
• Talk about where they grow. “Bluebells grow in the woods in May.” “Daisies grow in lawns.” “Sunflowers grow in summer and they’re very tall.”
• Spot them on walks. Leafdle works best as the indoor half of a habit — the other half is “ooh look, a buttercup” on the way to school.
• Relate it to something they know. “Grandma has these in her garden — they’re called peonies.”
• Five minutes a day. Short and warm beats long and earnest. The stars only go up.

Frequently asked questions

Can my child fail?

No. There is no timer, no lives, and no fail state. A wrong tap just gives a gentle wobble — the picture stays in place and they can try one of the other names. Stars only go up.

Which plants does Leafdle cover?

Leafdle starts with the eight flowers a UK child is most likely to meet on a walk or in a garden, and unlocks more as they earn stars:

• Tier 1 — from the first round. Eight classics: daffodil, rose, tulip, sunflower, daisy, buttercup, bluebell, poppy.
• Tier 2 — unlocks at 6 stars. Eight more familiar names: dandelion, snowdrop, pansy, lavender, crocus, foxglove, primrose, lily.
• Tier 3 — unlocks at 16 stars. Eight garden favourites: iris, marigold, hyacinth, geranium, hydrangea, peony, magnolia, camellia.
• Tier 4 — unlocks at 32 stars. Eight prettier-than-they-sound names: wisteria, jasmine, clematis, nasturtium, forget-me-not, lilac, snapdragon, hellebore.
• Tier 5 — unlocks at 60 stars. Six challenge names for Year 2: chrysanthemum, delphinium, gladiolus, dahlia, begonia, orchid.

Each new tier comes with a small celebration so your child knows new plants have appeared. Stars only go up — the tiers do not reset on a wrong answer.

What if my child can’t read yet?

That’s the right age to start. Leafdle uses only four answers per round, two of which a parent can quickly rule out by colour or shape. A wrong tap is welcome — it’s how the matching click happens. Read each name aloud the first few times; by the tenth round your child will be tracking the word on the tile, not just the picture.

More from Tadpole Games

• Fredle — a daily phonics word puzzle for UK children aged 4 to 7.
• Sumdle — trace two digits and an operator across a mixed grid to make a number.
• Flowerdle — the drag-to-match nature game where each flower has to find its leaf.
• Flagle — tap the flag that matches the famous landmark in the middle.

Photo credits

Every Leafdle photograph is a real botanical image from iNaturalist, used under a Creative Commons licence (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC). Per-photo attribution is recorded in /plants/CREDITS.txt in the source repository. Thank you to the iNaturalist community for putting these photographs into the commons.