Hi, teacher! Tony here.
Welcome to Shapegrams Junior, where kids build pictures one shape at a time!
Designed for ages 5-10, these puzzles help young learners practice dragging, rotating, resizing, and coloring shapes while learning how shapes can be combined to create something new.
Free to use. No account, no sign-up, nothing to install.
The big idea
This is where fine-motor skills meet big-picture thinking. Every Shapegram begins as a finished picture, then breaks apart into the shapes that make it, and students drag, turn, stretch, stack, and color each one until it clicks back together. Every move is hands-on practice and a little puzzle to solve.
The teacher picks the pictures and the ways to play to build a playlist.
Students open the playlist and begin moving shapes into place.
Young learners complete each puzzle in the playlist, and confetti flies.
Seven ways to play
Six ways to play build from gentle to tricky: start with Snappy, where shapes click right into place, and work up to Tricky, where only a faint dashed outline shows the way. Then there's Freely, a no-rules way to play where kids stretch, color, and remix the shapes into a picture all their own. You decide how far your students go.
Want to give it a try?
Open an Example PlaylistPlaylists
Choose the pictures you want, choose the ways to play, and Shapegrams Junior bundles them into a single student link with a QR. No student logins, no app to install, and it works on any device.
Always growing
Fresh Shapegrams Junior puzzles are added regularly. Want a heads-up the moment new pictures land? Subscribe below.
Stay in the loop
Get friendly emails with new puzzles and updates about Shapegrams.
Let’s go
Jump in, try a puzzle, and build a playlist for your students.
No account or sign-up needed.
More from Tony
Shapegrams Junior is hosted on Teacher Hive, a home for teacher-made apps. Browse hundreds of apps and add your own.
Visit Teacher HiveReady for the next level? Advanced digital art lessons and challenges in Google Slides, for ages 8 and up.
Visit ShapegramsTony Vincent helps educators turn new possibilities into meaningful, creative learning. Subscribe to his Learning in Hand newsletter, or bring him to your next PD or conference.
Visit Learning in HandBrowse and try the pictures, tap a tag to filter, then make a playlist to send to students.
Playlists are saved on this device; every link you share keeps working from anywhere. Editing one you made here keeps the same link. Editing one you added gives you a new one.
Show a message to teachers under the title strip on the Puzzle Library and My Playlists pages.
Pick a way to play
Deleted puzzles wait here. Restore one to put it back in your library, or delete it forever to free its space.
Upload an SVG (export from Google Drawings: File → Download → SVG). Group shapes that should move together; each top-level shape or group becomes one puzzle piece.
Drop an SVG here or
Pieces with the same colored letter are one shape group, so kids can swap them for each other. Tap pieces and use Same Shape or Make Unique to change the groups. (In Tricky any size/color in a group swaps; Colory needs the same size; Snappy/Turny need the same size and color.)
The same swatches players see in Colory. Tap a swatch to open a color picker and change every shape that uses that color. Two swatches that look almost alike are too similar. Open one and set it to the other’s color to merge them.
Tony tells one of these when a playlist with this puzzle is finished. Add up to 10.
Just the starting point. Students can turn sound on or off any time while they play.
Your picture is saved on this device, so you can come back and keep working. Download it to keep a picture file.
Pick a way to play it again
Shapegrams Junior is a library of pictures made of shapes. Kids rebuild a picture by dragging its shapes onto a canvas. You pick the pictures, choose the ways to play, and send students one link. That link is a playlist. No account or sign-up for anyone.
Every picture can be played any of these ways, and each way you choose makes one puzzle. The first six run easiest to hardest. Freely is an open canvas where students make the picture their own.
Tap Pictures in the top bar. Every card shows the picture, its name, and how many pieces it has. Tap a card to try the picture yourself in any way to play. The bar above the pictures filters them by level and by tag, and the two work together.
A playlist is an ordered set of pictures, each with the ways to play you picked. A picture with one way to play is one puzzle, so a playlist of 3 pictures with 2 ways to play each is 6 puzzles. Students open one link and play them in order.
Your playlists are saved on this device, and every link you share keeps working from anywhere. To move your list to another computer, use Export Playlists and Import Playlists at the bottom of the My Playlists page, or Add by Link to bring one back.
Students open the link or scan the QR. There is nothing to sign into.
Stuck? There is a Hint button. If a student cannot tell what to do, they tap Hint. It highlights one shape and points to the single thing to change about it next, whether that is moving it into place, turning it upright, resizing it, stacking it in front or behind, or coloring it. Each tap shows just one step, so a hint nudges a child along without giving the whole puzzle away. They tap Hint again to see the next step.
Progress is saved on the student's device, so they can close the tab and pick up where they left off. If you edit the playlist, progress resets so everyone plays the new version.
Sound is real feedback in Shapegrams Junior, not just decoration. Here is how it is used and how to control it.
Questions, ideas, or a puzzle you would love to see? Tony Vincent would be glad to hear from you.
tony@shapegrams.com