Space Race
A free typing game for kids. Students pick their grade and race a short space passage written at their reading level, against two pace ships and a ghost of their own best run.
- Free
- Typing game
- Grades 3–12
- No ads
- No sign-up
A typing game for kids that starts with hand placement
A third grade teacher asked us for an ad free way to practice typing, with correct hand placement, points and high scores. Space Race is that game. Every race starts with both hands on the home row: students tap F, J and Space together to launch. Then they type a short passage about space while their ship races the others. Correct words earn Stardust, the game's points, and each grade keeps its own top 10 high scores.
How Space Race works
Pick your grade
Students choose a grade from 3 to 12, and the game remembers it on that computer. Each grade has 25 passages written at its reading level, and a passage doesn't come back until 10 others have.
Press Race!
Home shows the grade, the Stardust total and the background the ship will fly to. Press Race! or Enter to start, or pick a different background or ship along the bottom first.
Launch and type
Fingers rest on F and J, then F, J and Space go down together to launch. After a 3, 2, 1, the student types the passage. The ship moves ahead with every correct key, and Space finishes each word with a soft thruster sound.
See how you did
Results show words per minute, accuracy and place, then the Stardust earned and anything it unlocked. A top 10 score asks for initials, and Enter races again.
What's in Space Race
Stardust points unlock backgrounds and ships
Every correct word earns Stardust, and accuracy multiplies it: 1.5 times at 90%, 2 times at 95% and 3 times at 100%. Stardust opens 11 more race backgrounds, from the Moon to the Galaxy core, and 5 more ships on top of the 3 free ones. In October, a Haunted Moon and a Pumpkin ship appear, free.
Played from the keyboard
Students keep their hands on the keys from the first race to the last. With stop on error, the cursor waits for the right key, and a wrong key makes no sound. Warps let a student skip two hard words a race.
- Enter
- Race, or race again
- FJSpace
- Launch
- Space
- Finish a word
- Enter
- Warp past a hard word, in a race
- Esc
- Back to Home
Built for typing practice in class
- 250 passages about space, 25 for each grade from 3 to 12, with every fact checked against a NASA page.
- Passages get longer as the grades go up, so a race takes about a minute at any grade.
- Two pace ships fly a little slower and a little faster than the student's average over their last 5 races, so the race stays close.
- High scores are a top 10 for each grade, and only races at 90% accuracy or better count.
- Calm space music plays on Home, the sound effects are calm too, and a speaker button turns all sound on or off.
- Teacher settings sit behind the gear: sound, stop on error, Warps, lock grade, Unlock everything, reset, and export or import progress.
No ads, no accounts, no student data
Space Race is ad free, needs no accounts and asks nothing about your students. Progress, Stardust and high scores stay in the browser on that computer, and teachers can export them to a file and import them on another computer.
Space Race questions
What is Space Race?
A free typing game for kids in grades 3 to 12. Students race short space passages written at their grade's reading level, earn Stardust for correct words and unlock new race backgrounds and ships.
Is it free?
Yes. There are no ads, no accounts and no sign-up.
How does it help with hand placement?
Every race starts with F, J and Space tapped together, so students launch with their index fingers on the home row keys and a thumb on Space.
Can I use it as a typing test for kids?
Each race works as a short typing check, about a minute long. Results show words per minute, where 5 typed characters count as a word, and accuracy, the share of keystrokes that were right.
How do high scores work?
Each grade has its own top 10 on that computer, ranked by words per minute. Only races at 90% accuracy or better count, and a new high score asks for 1 to 3 initials instead of a name.
Who are the other ships in the race?
Sparky's shuttle and a saucer are pace ships set from the student's last 5 races, one a little slower and one a little faster. A see-through ghost flies at the student's best speed at that grade.
Can I stop students from changing their grade?
Yes. Click the gear on Home and turn on Lock grade. The same settings turn sound, stop on error and Warps on or off, and Unlock everything opens every ship and background without changing the Stardust.
Where is progress saved?
In the browser on that computer. There are no accounts, so to move to another computer, use Export progress in the teacher settings and Import progress on the new one.
Tell us what your class thinks
Send an idea, a bug or a space topic your students want to type next. Every message goes to the Flint team that built Space Race.
