Build a food web. Bring a rock pool to life.
Five rock pools on a rocky shore have gone quiet. Your child brings each one back to life: adding seaweed, snails, crabs and sea stars, drawing the food web that connects them, and then running the tide to see if the pool stays in balance. A healthy pool brings rare visitors, like a red octopus or a black oystercatcher, for the tide pool journal.
Every creature in the game is a real animal or seaweed from Pacific coast tide pools, and every feeding link is a real one. The ideas line up with NGSS life science for elementary and middle school (3-LS4-3, 5-LS2-1 and MS-LS2):
Each visit to a pool has four short steps, guided by Pebble the hermit crab:
The pool is a real little simulation, not a scripted animation. The numbers your child picks decide what happens.
Read the full Tidepool Tenders guide
Ages 8 to 12, about Grades 3 to 7. Younger players can enjoy it with a grown-up reading along, and the read-aloud button reads every instruction.
From the food to the eater, because the arrow shows the direction energy moves. Sea lettuce → turban snail means the snail eats the sea lettuce and gets its energy. The game checks every arrow and explains it when one is drawn backward.
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