The kids and I play a typing game. I’ll be sitting on the couch with my laptop, and one of them will come over and ask to play. We’ll load up jefftk.com/speak:
I’ll write something:
Then they’ll write something:
Then I’ll write something:
It only accepts letters, numbers, and a few punctuation marks. As you type it says the letters, and when you press enter it says your whole sentence. There’s a history, but once something scrolls off the bottom of the screen it’s gone.
Some ways we’ll play with it:
They’ll ask me how to write something, I’ll spell it. I’ll point out the letters as needed, as vaguely as I can.
I’ll write something, they’ll guess at it, then we press enter and find out if they’re right.
I’ll write something, they’ll copy it.
I’ll write a word like ‘SAD’ and then they’ll see if they can modify it to make a related word like ‘MAD’.
It uses upper-case and sans-serif because that’s what the letters on they keyboard look like.
I got the idea from Daniel’s version, but rewrote it from scratch to better ignore mistaken inputs. Feel free to copy and modify!
Thanks, my 5yo was able to entertain himself with that for an hour straight while I filed taxes :-)
I’ll bring it out again later.
I like the legible javascript, feels like a throwback to the days of a simpler internet. :-)
Thanks! I’m glad they enjoyed it!
Writing things in Vanilla JS is a bit of a hobby of mine. Working all day in industrial-strength JS infrastructure with minification, source maps, compilation, and transpilation, it’s really nice to just sit down and write something with nothing between me and the browser.
Yup! I have this little ditty that I made many years ago, when I was still learning javascript. I still use it. Then a few years after that I briefly decided that my True Calling was making a JS educational video game about circuit theory, and I got pretty far before deciding to give up and switch to other projects. :)