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The dig site
A digger game for kids: drive, dig and find dinosaur bones
A digger to drive yourself, a world to explore, and no levels at all.
What is the dig site?
The dig site is a long world seen from the side and cut open like an ant farm, so your child can see every layer under the grass and the treasure buried in it. They drive a yellow digger from the yard at home past a meadow, a duck pond, a hill with a cave inside, dinosaur sand and a road with a deep ditch, to a rock quarry at the far end.
There are no levels, timers, scores or lessons. Your child drives and digs where they like. Earth falls, heaps up and slides off steep slopes, and water runs into any channel they dig. The land is the same every visit, so it becomes a familiar place, but the gems are buried somewhere new each time.
Two big arrow pedals drive the tracks, and the bucket goes wherever your child points. The machine does the fiddly parts itself: it scoops when dragged through the earth, curls up to hold a load and swings round when the target is behind it. A four-year-old only has to decide where.
How it plays
Step by step through the dig site
- 1
Learn to drive
On the first visit the voice shows how to drive and dig, with a pointing hand on the pedal and then on the dirt. The digger tilts on slopes, thumps down off small drops and crawls up steep ones. When it can’t go further (a wall too steep, water too deep), the voice says why, once.
- 2
Fill the truck
At home a dump truck waits with its near side cut away, so your child can watch the load grow. Three full buckets fill it, and too much spills over the back. A green button sends it off: it honks, tips its load on the dirt mountain, which grows, and backs in again, beeping.
- 3
Play with earth and water
Dirt tipped into the duck pond sinks and pushes the water up until it spills, and a channel dug beside it fills as the water runs in. Your child can pile up a mountain, dig a hole and drive down into it, or dig into the hill until they break into the cave with the treasure chest.
- 4
Help the school bus
A yellow school bus full of children can’t get home: the ditch by the road is too deep to cross. The voice asks your child to fill it. Once the ditch is level, the bus honks, rolls across and drives away, with a thank you and confetti, and the way to the quarry’s gold and diamonds is open.
- 5
Build a collection
Everything buried shows through the cutaway. When the bucket touches a find, it flies to the treasure bag and the voice names it. The bag keeps every kind of gem, the chests, the buses helped, and a dinosaur skeleton that fills in bone by bone over many visits, until “You found the whole dinosaur!”
Skills
What your child learns
- How loose earth and sand fall, heap up and slide, and how packed ground crumbles when it is dug out from underneath.
- That water runs downhill, levels off in a pond, and rises when something sinks into it.
- Cause and effect with a machine: a heavy load held far out tips the digger forward, and rock stops the bucket with a clunk.
- Planning a job in steps: dig a load, carry it to the truck, tip it in, and send the truck off when it is full.
- Solving a real problem their own way, since there are many ways to fill the ditch so the bus can cross.
- Using two hands together, one finger on a pedal and one steering the bucket.
The thinking
Why it works
Most vehicle games for young children do the driving for them. Here your child operates the machine, with physics they can see: earth heaping and spilling, water running, a digger tilting on a slope. An early version was a single site with one loop (dig, fill the truck). It felt repetitive, so it became a world to explore, with jobs to choose and finds that build up over visits.
Nothing is paid out for digging. In one study, preschoolers who were promised a reward for drawing later chose to draw less in free play (Lepper, Greene & Nisbett 1973). Here the digging itself is the fun.
Taps and one-finger drags work well for children this age, but we know of no evidence that a four-year-old can work an on-screen joystick and buttons at once. So the parent area lets you choose how the bucket is steered (by dragging, with a joystick, or a different way each day) and shows the two side by side.
Away from the screen
Keep it going at home
Ideas to carry the game into everyday life, no screen needed.
Dig in a sandbox and notice that damp sand stands up in walls while dry sand slides, just like the earth in the game.
Make a pond in the sand: dig a hole, pour in water, then tip sand in and watch the water rise.
Bury a few shells or small toys for your child to dig up and load into a toy truck.
Watch a real digger at a building site from behind the fence, and name the arm, the bucket and the tracks together.
FAQ
Questions about the dig site
Is the dig site good for a 4-year-old?
It opens from age 4 in the town, and it was designed so a four-year-old only has to say where: the digger scoops, lifts and swings by itself, and if a finger is a little out of reach, the tracks creep closer on their own. A parent can show it earlier, or hide it, in the parent area.
Are there levels or a score?
No. Filling the truck and helping the bus are jobs to choose, never required. In the town, the dig site’s progress dots stand for its first big moments instead, such as a whole dinosaur, a treasure chest and the bus helped across.
Can my child get stuck?
Not for long. The digger can always climb out of a hole it dug, because a dug wall caves in to a slope. After 24 seconds without driving, treasure in view twinkles and the voice suggests digging it out, or driving on.
What can I see in the parent area?
Visits, how far your child has driven, truckloads, buckets tipped, treasure by kind, dinosaur bones, chests and buses helped, plus the steering setting.
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A whole town of learning, ready when your child is
Spoken from the first tap, no reading needed, no ads, and progress that stays on your iPad.