Why babies love peekaboo
Peekaboo is one of the oldest games in the world, played in almost every culture, and it is secretly a lesson. Around eight to twelve months a baby is working out that things carry on existing when they cannot be seen. Every time the cloud goes and the picture is still there, that idea gets a little firmer. The surprise and the relief — gone, and back! — is why they laugh, and why they want it again and again.
How to play
Tap the cloud: it floats up, Golu says "peekaboo!" and names the picture. Tap again and the cloud comes back with something new behind it. Say the name yourself after Golu, and point at it. For a baby who is not yet tapping, you do the taps and let them watch your face as much as the screen — your "boo!" matters more than the phone's.
Why a separate toddler mode
A one-year-old cannot play a game that has a right answer. They cannot read a button, they tap with the whole hand, and they tap the same thing twenty times because hearing it again is the point. So this mode takes away everything a toddler cannot use: there are no questions, no wrong answers, no scores, no words on screen and no small buttons. Every tap does something good.
Lock the screen before you hand it over
Press the 🔒 button in the corner. The page goes full screen and the site's menus disappear, so a stray slap cannot take your child somewhere else. To unlock, press and hold the 🔓 button for two seconds — long enough that a toddler will not manage it by accident. (On some iPhones full screen is not allowed; the lock still hides the menus.)
With you, not instead of you
For children under two, the guidance from the WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics is clear: very little screen time, and when there is some, a grown-up sits with them and talks about what they see. That is how this page is meant to be used. When the phone says "cow", you say "cow! moo! Like the cow we saw on the way to Nani's." The screen names the picture; you connect it to the world. Five minutes is a good session. Then put it away and find the real thing.
What your toddler is learning
Between twelve and thirty months children go from a handful of words to several hundred, and nearly all of those first words are names of things they can see: animals, food, vehicles, people. Hearing a word while looking at a clear picture of it — many times, in their own language — is exactly how that happens. Animal sounds are often a toddler's very first "words", which is why the animal and bird boards say the sound as well as the name.
In your language
Choose your language with the button at the top of the page before you lock the screen. Every picture is named in 34 languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Arabic, Spanish and Japanese — so a toddler hears the words the family actually uses at home.
Now do it for real
When the screen goes off, do something with your hands. Try 🌧️ Rain in a glass — an easy science experiment for ages 3-6, with every step read aloud in your language. You will need a tall glass of water, shaving foam or whipped cream, blue or any dark colour (food colour or ink); nothing that needs a trip to a shop.
There are 56 more on the things to do at home page, and free printable worksheets if you would rather have something on paper. Ten minutes on a screen and twenty minutes off it is a good shape for a day at this age.