Little Mayor for teachers
An educational game about urban planning for children around 10 years old (grades 4 and 5).
Kids build a town and learn why the kindergarten belongs close to home and the water treatment plant by the water.
Everything follows real urban-planning rules. The game runs on tablets and computers, in English and Czech, and can also be played on paper.
For preparation
β±οΈA ready 45-minute lesson about your townminute by minute, what the children learn, curriculum links, variants for a second lesson and homework
Printable materials
πLesson plan and worksheet (English)A4: a step-by-step 45-minute lesson, a worksheet for the children and an answer key for the teacher; print or save as PDF
πΊοΈGame boards (10 maps)print on A1 landscape, scales down to A3; the boards are mostly visual, labels are in Czech for now
πBuilding cardsA4 landscape, 20 cards 7Γ7 cm with rule pictograms; currently in Czech, English version on the way
πCheat sheet for running the gameA4 with the flow of a game and the full table of rules; currently in Czech
π§βπ«Class mode (live overview)no sign-up: a link and QR code for the children, a live count of games, average score, most common mistakes, a class leaderboard and a CSV download; the page labels are in Czech for now
Printing: open a page and use File β Print (or save as PDF).
The boards are designed for A1, but "fit to page" works fine on A3 or A4.
A 45-minute lesson outline
- 5 min: ask the class: "What does a town need so that life in it is good?" Collect ideas on the board.
- 5 min: show the game on the projector and walk through "How to play?" (a guided demo).
- 20 min: groups of three or four children build a town (on tablets, computers, or on a printed board with cards). Easy difficulty, the Pond map.
- 10 min: each group presents its result; read the score explanations together ("Why shouldn't the kindergarten stand by the main road?").
- 5 min: reflection: "Which rule surprised you? Does it hold in your town or village?"
Tip for a class on tablets: open the game with your own class name in the address, for example
starosta.alho.cz/app/?stanek=class-5a&lang=en. The "Mayor of the day" leaderboard is then shared by the whole class,
and after the lesson you can download a table of all the games (what went well, which mistakes repeated):
starosta.alho.cz/api/export.csv?stanek=class-5a. No children's names are stored, only leaderboard nicknames (deleted after 30 days).
What the children learn
- Walking distances: the kindergarten and the school belong close enough to housing for children to walk there in a few minutes (real planning standards).
- Separating utilities (treatment plant, heating plant) from housing, and why.
- Height transitions in a neighbourhood, i.e. why a tower block does not stand next to a family house.
- Trade-offs: plots are scarce and not everything fits, just like in a real town.
The game is free, works offline, has no sign-up and no cookies, and never asks children for a name or e-mail address. What it stores is on the Privacy page.
The complete rules are inside the game itself (Rules).
Played it with your class? Tell us what worked and what did not. It takes two minutes
and we read every reply.
Feedback form (in Czech, answers in English are welcome).
If something does not work
The game will not load, or shows an old version. Close the tab and open
starosta.alho.cz/app/?lang=en again. If that does not help,
clear the site data in your browser and the game downloads fresh.
The game is in Czech. Open the address with ?lang=en at the end,
or use the English button on the start screen.
There is no internet in the classroom. That is fine. Load the game once while connected and it then
works offline; results upload by themselves once the tablet is back online.
The class overview is empty. The overview only shows games carrying your class code: children have to
start from the link or QR code in class mode, not from the plain game address.
None of that helped. Write to us through the contact form and we will answer within two working days.