🍎 Grown-Ups' Corner

SANDFALL — Teacher & Family Guide

A drag-to-pour “falling-sand” playground where 20 elements obey real physics. Kids pour sand, water, fire, and lava and watch cause-and-effect reactions unfold — a living model of how matter behaves and changes.

🎒 Grade band: K–5 🔬 Physical Science 💻 Computational Thinking ⏱️ Lessons: 20–30 min 🖐️ Touch & mouse

← Back to the game

Overview: what your child is playing with

SANDFALL is an open-ended sandbox — there is no score and no “winning.” Children choose an element, drag on the screen to pour it, and observe what happens as gravity, liquids, heat, and life-like growth interact. Every element follows a small set of hidden rules, so the game rewards predicting, testing, and explaining — the heart of both science and computational thinking. It works with a finger (multi-touch — several children can pour at once) or a mouse, on iPads and Chromebooks alike.

The elements & tools kids actually use

Powders — Sand, Salt, Snow, Gunpowder

Pour and they tumble and pile like real grains, sliding down slopes. Salt melts ice and dissolves in water; snow melts near heat; gunpowder explodes if it touches fire or lava.

Rainbow Dust

A powder whose color shifts through the rainbow as it streams out — the friendliest first tool. Great for free drawing and for noticing how powders settle.

Liquids — Water, Oil, Acid

Liquids flow, find their level, and puddle. Oil floats on top of water (it’s lighter); acid eats through most solids; water puts out fire and turns it to steam.

Energy — Fire, Lava, Ember

Heat sources that glow. Fire spreads to anything flammable and rises as smoke; lava flows, burns, and hardens into stone when it meets water; embers smolder and re-ignite.

Solids — Wall, Stone, Wood, Glass, Ice

Building blocks that hold still. Use Wall or Stone to make bowls, funnels, and dams; Wood burns; Ice melts near heat into water; Glass resists acid.

Life — Seed, Plant

Drop a Seed next to Water and it sprouts into a Plant that grows and creeps upward — a tiny living system that also happens to be flammable.

🖌️ Brush size & 🎨 Sand color picker

A slider sets how wide the pour is (a fine sprinkle to a wide gush). When Sand is chosen, a full color picker lets kids mix any custom color for their grains.

💾 Save / Load, 📸 Screenshot, ⏸ Pause, 🗑 Clear

Children can freeze the world (Pause), save a creation to come back to (Save/Load), capture a picture to keep or share (Screenshot), or wipe the canvas and start fresh (Clear).

No reading required to start. The icons and colored dots let pre-readers dive in, while the element names support early literacy for older kids.

Standards alignment

SANDFALL is a model/simulation: each element is a symbol that follows conditional rules, and play is a loop of predicting and testing cause and effect. That maps cleanly onto 2026 CSTA computer-science standards for patterns, algorithms and data, and onto NGSS physical-science ideas about matter and energy. Every row below is tied to a mechanic that genuinely exists in the game.

2026 CSTA PK–12 Computer Science Standards — Kindergarten to Grade 2
Code	Standard	How SANDFALL addresses it
EK-ALG-ML-02	Recognize attributes of objects to notice patterns and make decisions.	Kids sort the materials by how they behave and look (powders pile, liquids flow, solids hold their shape), spot patterns (oil always rises above water) and use them to decide what to pour next.
E1-ALG-IM-03	Explain how a change to an algorithm leads to a different outcome.	Kids discover the “recipe” each element follows (e.g., fire spreads to wood, then rises as smoke) and see that pouring the same elements in a different order gives a different result. This is everyday step-by-step thinking, not writing code.
E1-ALG-PS-01	Decompose a problem or task into individual parts to develop an algorithm.	Building a “machine” (e.g., a lava-powered glass factory) means breaking the goal into parts: a container, a heat source, a supply of sand, and timing. Children work out the ordered steps for each part, with no code involved.
E2-DAT-DI-09	Develop a question that can be answered with data.	Children turn a hunch (“salt will melt the ice”) into a question they can answer by running it and recording what they see, with Screenshot as their evidence of cause and effect.

No grade 3–5 CSTA standards are cited. Those standards expect students to write, debug or remix actual programs, which SANDFALL does not ask them to do.

Bonus — NGSS Physical Science connections (Grades K–5)
Code	Performance Expectation	How SANDFALL addresses it
2-PS1-1	Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.	Kids sort the 20 elements by how they behave — powders pile, liquids flow, gases rise, solids hold still.
2-PS1-4	Construct an argument with evidence that some changes caused by heating or cooling can be reversed and some cannot.	Ice ⇄ water and water ⇄ steam are reversible; burning wood or exploding gunpowder is not — the game shows both.
4-PS3-2	Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.	Fire and lava transfer heat to neighboring cells, spreading across wood, oil, and plants — visible energy transfer.
5-PS1-1	Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.	The whole world is a grid of tiny particles; zooming into a pour shows matter behaving as many small pieces.
5-PS1-4	Conduct an investigation to determine whether the mixing of two or more substances results in new substances.	Lava + water → stone + steam; lava + sand → glass; acid + stone → dissolved — mixing produces brand-new materials.

Standard codes and titles are quoted from the 2026 CSTA PK–12 Computer Science Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Three ready-to-run lessons

Lesson 1 · Grades K–2 · ~20 min

Sorting the Sandbox: Powders, Liquids & Solids

Objective: Classify materials by their observable behavior. Standards: 2-PS1-1, EK-ALG-ML-02

Vocabulary

solid — holds its shape
liquid — flows and puddles
powder — tiny grains that pile
gas — rises and floats away
observe — watch carefully
classify — sort into groups

Steps

As a class, make three headers on the board: PILES UP, FLOWS DOWN, HOLDS STILL.
Model one pour: choose Sand, set the Brush slider small, and drag to make a pile. Ask: which header does sand go under?
Give each child three elements to test: one powder (Salt or Snow), one liquid (Water), one solid (Wall or Stone).
Children pour each one and sort it under the right header on their own paper.
Bonus: pour Fire and watch the smoke rise — introduce a fourth group, FLOATS UP (gas).
Use Clear to reset between tries; tap the Eraser to fix mistakes without clearing everything.

Discussion

How did you know sand was a powder and not a liquid?
What did the water do that the wall never did?
Where does the smoke go — and why doesn’t sand ever float up like that?

Lesson 2 · Grades 2–4 · ~25 min

Reaction Detectives: Predict → Pour → Prove

Objective: Predict and provide evidence for cause-and-effect reactions. Standards: E2-DAT-DI-09, 2-PS1-4, 5-PS1-4

Vocabulary

predict — a smart guess
cause — what makes it happen
effect — what happens
reaction — a change from mixing
evidence — proof you observed
reversible — can change back

Steps

Hand out a “Detective Sheet” with three challenges: Fire + Wood, Lava + Water, Salt + Ice.
Before touching the screen, each detective writes a prediction for each pairing.
Build challenge 1: pour a line of Wood, then dab one bit of Fire on it. Watch it spread. Take a Screenshot as evidence.
Build challenge 2: make a Stone bowl of Water, then drip Lava in from above. What new material forms where they meet? (Stone + steam!)
Build challenge 3: pile Ice, sprinkle Salt on it, and watch. Then try Fire near ice instead — compare.
Detectives mark each prediction ✔ or ✘ and write what really happened next to their Screenshot.

Discussion

Which prediction surprised you the most? What made the surprise happen?
Lava met water and became stone. Could you turn that stone back into lava and water? Why not?
Ice melted from both salt and fire — is the cause the same or different each time?

Lesson 3 · Grades 4–5 · ~30 min

Engineer a Chain-Reaction Machine

Objective: Decompose a goal into element interactions and test-and-debug a design. Standards: E1-ALG-PS-01, 4-PS3-2

Vocabulary

decompose — break into parts
sequence — steps in order
system — parts working together
debug — find & fix a problem
iterate — try, improve, repeat
energy transfer — heat moving along

Steps

Pose the goal: “Make a machine where one dab of fire ends with sand pouring into water.”
Plan on paper first — decompose the goal into parts: a fuse, a support that burns, a load of sand, and a pool below.
Build with Wall/Stone to make shelves and a funnel; rest Sand on a Wood support; place Water at the bottom.
Trigger it with a single dab of Fire on the wood. Watch the heat transfer along the wood until the support burns away.
If it fails (sand sticks, fire dies out), debug: adjust the Brush size, reposition supports, or add a splash of Oil to carry the flame — then test again.
Save the working machine. Trade saves with a partner, Load theirs, and remix it to add a second stage.

Discussion

What was the hardest part to get working, and how did you fix it?
How did heat travel through your machine from the first dab of fire?
When you remixed a partner’s machine, what did you keep and what did you change — and why?

Talking with kids about what they made

Open-ended questions turn free play into thinking. Try these while they build — no right answers required.

“Tell me the story of what happened when these two touched.

“What did you think would happen — and what actually did?

“If you wanted twice as much steam, what would you change?

“Which element is the sneakiest? What makes it tricky?

“Can you make something that changes and then changes back?

“Show me a spot where one thing caused three other things to happen.

“How is pouring water different from pouring sand?

“If you saved this world for a friend, what should they try first?

Capstone rubric — “Make Your Own Elemental Machine”

A simple, kid-friendly rubric for a final project: each student designs, builds, and explains one chain-reaction world, then saves a Screenshot to hand in.

Criterion	1 · Emerging	2 · Developing	3 · Accomplished
Cause & effect	Pours elements but can’t yet say why a change happened.	Names one clear cause-and-effect pair in their world.	Explains a chain of two or more linked reactions in order.
Use of elements	Uses one or two elements.	Combines several elements from different groups on purpose.	Picks elements for their specific properties to make the machine work.
Design & iteration	Builds once; stops if it doesn’t work.	Tries again after a problem and changes one thing.	Tests, debugs, and improves the design more than once (and can Save/remix).
Explanation	Describes what it looks like.	Describes what happens, step by step.	Predicts what would happen if a part were changed, using evidence.

Quick capture tip: Have students use the in-game 📸 Screenshot button to hand in a picture of their machine, and the 💾 Save feature to keep a version they can reopen and explain live.