ABCya produces lots of games designed to help elementary school students sharpen their skills in a lot of areas. Included in ABCya’s catalog of games is a fun typing game called Cup Stacking. In this game students have to type the letters that they see on the cups that appear on their screens. When they type the correct letters the cups stack up into a pyramid. Once the pyramid is built students have to type the letters again to deconstruct the pyramid. The object of the game is to build up and take down the pyramids as quickly as possible.

The Cup Stacking game is fun, but it doesn’t inherently reinforce the “home row” technique. However, ABCya’s Alpha Munchies game does reinforce the “home row” concept. In Alpha Munchies students to type letters or words, depending upon their skill level, to guard their virtual lunches against “Alpha Critters” who are trying to steal their food.

Applications for Education
I played both games for a while and could see how students would get sucked into playing them for a long time. The longer they play, the better they should get at typing quickly and accurately. If you’re going to have students use the games in your classroom, I recommend having them use headphones or turn off the sound as the music might drive you nuts after a while.