Same or different?

How to play the same or different game

Tap “Listen”. Mika plays tune 1, then tune 2 straight after; the 1 and the 2 light up while each one sounds. Sometimes the two are the same, sometimes one note is different. Tap “Same” or “Different”, or “Hear it again” first. A right answer makes Mika howl and fills a paw. A wrong one takes nothing away: Mika says what it was and plays both tunes again.

The tunes start with three notes and get one note longer after every second right answer, up to six. The first note never changes, and the changed note stays in the same key, so it never sounds out of tune, just different. After four right rounds your child can take the tune into Brumm Kids: a marimba plays it there over a beat, and they can sing along.

What same and different mean for a young child

Two things are the same when you can find no difference in what you are comparing: the same colour, the same shape, the same tune. They are different when at least one thing doesn't match. Similar sits in between: alike in some ways, not in all, like a lemon and a lime. Young children say “same” for all of it, so the question that helps most is “the same in what?”: colour, size, shape, how many, or how it sounds. A sound is harder than a picture, because the first tune is gone by the time the second one plays. The child has to hold it in their head, and that is exactly what this game practises.

For parents and teachers

The game needs no microphone: the notes are made in the browser, and your child only listens and taps. There are no points and no comparing with other children; the paws only collect right rounds, and a wrong one never takes one away. The two buttons carry = and ≠ beside the words, so a child who can't read yet can answer, and a child who uses symbol cards can point to the same signs. Nothing is stored or sent. A round takes a few seconds, a game about five minutes, made for children of about five to ten. In a classroom, put the phone or tablet on a speaker and let everyone answer at once, hands on heads for same, hands on shoulders for different: nobody is out, and one child taps the class's answer.

How to teach same and different, step by step

1. Two things, one big difference. A red block and a blue block of the same size. Name both halves: “Same shape. Different colour.”
2. Use the words all day. Socks, shoes, cups at lunch, two cars on the street. “Same” and “different” are learned in the room, not on a sheet.
3. Then three things, one odd one out. Two spoons and a fork. Sesame Street's song “One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)” is the old classic for this step.
4. Change one feature at a time: colour first, then size, then which way it faces, then a missing part, then what kind of thing it is.
5. Ask how, not only which. “What is the same? What is different?” The child who can say both has understood it.
6. Then the ears: two sounds, two clap patterns, two tunes. Keep them short, three or four claps or notes, and play them close together.

Same or different games for preschool and kindergarten

None of these needs a printer. The ages are where most children start; any of them works later too.

Odd one out (from 3)

Put three toys on the table, two the same and one different. The child points to the different one, then says why. Start with a different colour, end with a different kind: three animals and a car.

Sound pairs (from 3)

Six small boxes you can't see into, filled in pairs: rice, dried beans, a few paper clips. The child shakes them and finds the two that sound the same. An adult fills them and tapes the lids shut: rice, beans and clips are a choking risk for small children.

Same or different words (from 4)

Say two words and let the child show same or different: cat – cat, cat – cap, sun – sun, pin – bin. Start with words that differ in their first sound, then the last. This is the listening step before phonics; in England it belongs to Phase 1 of Letters and Sounds (DfES 2007), which opens with general sound discrimination. Once it gets easy, hide your mouth behind a card, so the ears do the work.

Clap it twice (from 4)

Clap a short pattern, then clap it again, the same or with one clap moved. Thumbs together for same, thumbs apart for different. Three or four claps are plenty at first. When they hear it reliably, let a child clap and the grown-up answer. To clap a pattern back instead of judging it, try Clap back.

Two tunes (from 5)

Sing two short patterns on “la”, or play them on a xylophone or glockenspiel, and change one note in the second. That is the game at the top of this page, which plays the tunes for you so the grown-up can guess along. The step before, with two single notes, is Higher or lower?

Same or different battle (from 6)

Two objects, a tomato and a potato. One player names something the same (both grow in a garden), the other something different (one is red), taking turns until someone runs out. It comes from Math Anywhere, a US maths project, whose players find “same” the harder side to argue; give it to the older player.

Same or different walk (from 4)

Outside, each child brings back two leaves, two stones or two sticks and says one thing that is the same and one that is different. It works with any group size and ends in a pile you can sort.

Same and different worksheets

This page has no printable worksheet. If you make your own, on paper or a whiteboard, these are the usual kinds, roughly from easiest to hardest:

• Circle or colour the same: one picture on the left, three on the right, one of them identical, or the same size. Colouring the answer suits children who can't hold a pencil line yet.
• Match with a line: two columns of the same pictures in a different order.
• Odd one out: four pictures in a row, one different in colour, size, position, a missing part or its kind.
• Spot the difference: two nearly identical pictures with three to five changes, from about five.

A worksheet trains the eyes. The same idea for the ears needs no sheet at all: two claps, two sounds, two tunes.

Where it sits in the curriculum: in England's Early Years Foundation Stage (early learning goals since 2021, as of 2026), children by the end of reception compare quantities up to 10 and recognise when one is greater than, less than or the same as the other. In US kindergartens, the Common Core maths standards (2010) ask children to compare two objects and describe the difference (K.MD.A.2), to sort objects into categories (K.MD.B.3), and to compare shapes, describing how they are alike and different (K.G.B.4).

Same or different in music: what children hear at which age

A rough guide from the classroom. Children vary by a year or two either way, and a child who sings at home is often ahead of the table.

Same or different is an old format in music teaching. Edwin Gordon's Primary Measures of Music Audiation (1979), for children of about five to eight, is built entirely from pairs of short tunes and rhythms that children mark as same or different. A note that leaves the key is the easier kind to hear: Laurel Trainor and Sandra Trehub (1994) found five-year-olds already notice it more readily than a note that stays in the key. This game only uses the harder kind, which is why it starts with three notes and moves the note two steps of the scale while the tunes are short.

Examples of things that look the same but are different

Plain examples of different, for the youngest: a red car and a blue car (different colour), a big ball and a small ball (different size), a banana and an avocado (different kind). The list below is the harder half: things that look the same and still aren't.

• Salt and sugar: the same white grains, a different taste.
• Water and white vinegar: the same in a glass, a different smell.
• Identical twins: nearly the same face and the same genes, but different fingerprints, so even they are not the same.
• Two tunes in this game: the same first note, the same key, and one of the later notes moved.
• A lemon and a lime: similar, not the same: a different colour, a different taste.

Different or diffrent? How to use the word, and same or similar

It is different, with two f's and an e on each side of the r. “Diffrent” is a common misspelling, because the middle e is barely spoken. “Different from” is right everywhere; British English also says “different to”, American English “different than”. The opposite of the same is different; similar is the word for nearly the same.

For older children and grown-ups, the same game with tunes that keep growing is the melody memory test. More listening games for children are under Listening games.

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