Cognitive development
Garden Explorers
Suggested age: Ages 4 to 8
Move the magnifying glass around the garden and find what is in your field journal.
Choose the difficulty
For parents and caregivers
How Garden Explorers helps your child develop
Looking for something small among many similar things trains attention and the eye, and a magnifying glass turns the search into a little investigation. Here is how it is played, what it builds and how to keep going at home.
How to play
A garden hides tiny Mora figures among flowers, stones and leaves. Your child drags a magnifying glass that enlarges whatever is under it and, when they see something from their field journal, taps it inside the glass to log it. Each find turns to color and brings a fun fact. Easy has 3 big things to find; medium, 6, plus extra figures that are not in the journal; hard, 8 tiny ones, some half hidden in the grass. Tapping something that is not in the journal only counts for the stars.
What they are learning
The game builds selective attention (looking for one specific thing and ignoring the rest), visual discrimination (telling similar shapes apart) and organized searching, going over the garden bit by bit instead of at random. Comparing the journal silhouette with what they see in the glass exercises visual memory, and the fun facts feed their curiosity about nature.
Ideas to keep going at home
- Go out to the yard or the park with a magnifying glass and fill a field journal with drawings of what you find.
- Hide small toys in a room and give hot-and-cold clues.
- Ask which fun fact they liked best and look up a new one together.
A tip from Mora: play together for a short while, 5 to 10 minutes, and talk when you finish. Screens work best as a starting point for family conversations rather than as a solo activity: real learning happens in the conversation, which is the heart of the Mora method.