JavaScript Tutorial for Kids: Disappearing Snowman

Guess the right word before your snowman melts!

We’ve created this tutorial just in time for the holidays. Code a fun word game that you can share with family and friends.

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This Christmas-themed guessing game uses simple JavaScript code to power the game functions. Try coding this game following the tutorial and then customize it to make it your own.

Complete this JavaScript tutorial to make your own Disappearing Snowman Game.

Play the completed Disappearing Snowman Game.

Recommended: JavaScript for Kids

Tutorial Steps

Step 1: Fade keyboard keys on click
Step 2: Check for a match when clicking a keyboard key
Step 3: Remove a snowman part when there’s no match for a clicked keyboard key
Step 4: Check if the player loses
Step 5: Check if the player wins
Finished project!

What you need:

1. Text editor

We’ll be using the CodeWizardsHQ editor to write and run our JavaScript code.

You can also use an online text editor like replit that allows you to author and run JavaScript programs in a web browser. Make sure you have all of the project base files in order for your program to work correctly.

2. Base Files

Download the base files and open the app.js file. This folder contains all the images and files you will need to complete your game.

The HTML file holds the page title, emojis, and Player/Computer choice text.
The CSS file adds some styling to our page and helps lay out the HTML elements.
The error-handler.js file will display a big red error box on the page if you make an error while typing out your JavaScript code.
The app.js file is where we’ll write our application code.

If you’re a CodeWizardsHQ student, download the x_hour_of_code_2022 project for the completed code. The starter files are in the javascript-projects/disappearing-snowman/starter-files directory.

Note: The index.html file (which executes the JavaScript) expects the filename app.js so you must use the same file name if you’re using your own text editor! You’ll edit the app.js file but you’ll always run the index.html file.

This tutorial is for beginner JavaScript programmers ages 8+. It assumes you understand basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Fade keyboard keys on click

When someone uses our app, they’ll try to guess the hidden word one letter at a time by clicking the keyboard on the page with their mouse. In this step, we’ll fade out each letter they click and ensure that no more logic runs on a faded-out letter.

In the styles.css file there’s a CSS class to make a keyboard key look faded out called selected. We’ll attach this class to whatever keyboard key the user clicks using JavaScript. You don’t have to type anything in the CSS file, this is just provided as a reference so you know why attaching this class to an HTML element makes it look faded out.

/* Added by JavaScript */
.hidden {
    display: none;
}
.selected {
    opacity: 0.3;
}

Navigate back to your app.js file to add the selected class to any key the user clicks.

First, create a variable called keyboardContainer
Use the document.querySelector() function to reference the element with the ID of keyboard-container and store it in the keyboardContainer variable
Then, we need to run code whenever an element in the keyboardContainer is clicked. We can use the addEventListener() function to ensure a function called handleKeyboardClick() (which we’ll define in just a minute) will run whenever a user clicks inside the keyboardContainer. The click event is triggered by clicking your mouse anywhere inside the keyboardContainer HTML element.

var words = ["APPLE", "PANCAKES", "COMPUTER", "PARIS", "MICROPHONE", "PASTRY"];
var randomWord = getRandomWord(words);

var keyboardContainer = document.querySelector("#keyboard-container");
keyboardContainer.addEventListener("click", handleKeyboardClick);

Create the function handleKeyboardClick() and define a single parameter called event that will be passed to this function whenever the keyboardContainer is clicked.
Whenever our keyboardContainer is clicked, we’ll run the handleKeyboardClick() function.

keyboardContainer.addEventListener("click", handleKeyboardClick);
generateHiddenWord(randomWord);

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
}

Create a variable called clickedElement. We can get information about the element that was clicked by using the target property. We’ll store the element that was clicked in the variable.
Anytime a user clicks inside the keyboardContainer element our click event listener will fire. But, we only want to continue if they click on a letter. Check if the clickedElement does not (!) contain the letter class or if (||) contains the selected class (which we’ll add next). If either of those conditions is true, we’ll use the return keyword to immediately exit the function.
Finally, we’ll add the selected class to our clickedElement to ensure the CSS styles are applied to make it fade out a bit.

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {

    var clickedElement = event.target;
    if (!clickedElement.classList.contains("letter") || clickedElement.classList.contains("selected")) return;
    clickedElement.classList.add("selected");

}

Hint: Test this out by clicking a few of the keys on the HTML page. They should fade out as you click them!

Step 1 Output:

Step 2: Check for a match when clicking a keyboard key

In this step, we’ll check to see if the keyboard key a user clicks matches any of the letters in the hidden word. If so, we’ll show all of the matching letters in the hidden word.

First, let’s define a function called checkForMatch(). This function will take the clickedLetter as a parameter and will check to see if it matches any of the hidden letters.
Create a variable called hiddenLetterElements where we’ll store references to the hidden letters. We’ll need to know all of the hidden letters on the page in order to compare them with the clickedLetter parameter. To get them, use document.querySelectorAll() and select all elements with the class hidden. The querySelectorAll() method returns an array-like object that represents any HTML elements with the selector passed into the parentheses.

generateHiddenWord(randomWord);

function checkForMatch(clickedLetter) {
  var hiddenLetterElements = document.querySelectorAll(".hidden");
}

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
  ...
}

Once we have all of the hiddenLetterElements, we can use a for...of loop to loop through the hidden letters one at a time. We’ll compare them with the clickedLetter that was passed in as a parameter to the function.
In the for...of loop, create a variable called hiddenLetter and get the textContent of the hiddenLetterElement.
Then, use a conditional statement to compare the hiddenLetter with our clickedLetter parameter and see if they are the same. The === operator ensures that both items it compares are equal.
The last thing we need to do in our checkForMatch() function is to remove the hidden class from any hiddenLetterElement whose letter matches the clickedLetter. The remove() method of the classList object allows us to remove a class from an HTML element.

function checkForMatch(clickedLetter) {
    var hiddenLetterElements = document.querySelectorAll(".hidden");

    for (var hiddenLetterElement of hiddenLetterElements) {
        var hiddenLetter = hiddenLetterElement.textContent;
        if (hiddenLetter === clickedLetter) {
            hiddenLetterElement.classList.remove("hidden");
        }
    }
}

Finally, back in our handleKeyboardClick() function, create a clickedLetter variable to store the textContent of the clickedElement.
Then we’ll pass this variable to our new checkForMatch() function. This ensures that whenever a user clicks a keyboard letter, handleKeyboardClick() will check for a match with that letter and all of the hidden letters.
Run your program and try clicking a few of the keyboard letters. You should see the ones that match the hidden letters show up on the page!

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
    var clickedElement = event.target;
   
    if (!clickedElement.classList.contains("letter") || clickedElement.classList.contains("selected")) return;
    clickedElement.classList.add("selected");

    var clickedLetter = clickedElement.textContent;
    checkForMatch(clickedLetter);

}

Step 2 Output:

Step 3: Remove a snowman part when there’s no match for a clicked keyboard key

Now that we can tell if a user found a match or not, we need to remove a snowman part whenever there isn’t a match. This makes it seem like the snowman is melting if you guess a letter incorrectly!

Our snowman is made up of a few parts that are distinguished by CSS classes. The main parts have the classes hat, face, scarf, hands, body-top, body-middle, and body-bottom. You can see these parts if you view the HTML in index.html.

index.html (no changes here, just shown for context)

<section id="snowman-container">
    <img class="hat" src="images/hat.png" />
    <img class="face nose" src="images/nose.png" />
    <img class="face eyes" src="images/eyes.png" />
    <img class="face mouth" src="images/mouth.png" />
    <img class="scarf" src="images/scarf.png" />
    <img class="hands left-hand" src="images/left-hand.png" />
    <img class="hands right-hand" src="images/right-hand.png" />
    <img class="body-top" src="images/body-top.png" />
    <img class="body-middle" src="images/body-middle.png" />
    <img class="body-bottom" src="images/body-bottom.png" />
</section>

In app.js, create an array called snowmanParts and store each of the classnames. Order them from top (hat) to bottom (body-bottom). Note that each snowman part starts with a dot (.). This is a CSS notation that indicates each string represents a CSS class, and we’ll use the strings in the snowmanParts array to query the correct HTML element by its class name.

app.js

var words = ["APPLE", "PANCAKES", "COMPUTER", "PARIS", "MICROPHONE", "PASTRY"];
var randomWord = getRandomWord(words);
var keyboardContainer = document.querySelector("#keyboard-container");
var snowmanParts = [".hat", ".face", ".scarf", ".hands", ".body-top", ".body-middle", ".body-bottom"];
keyboardContainer.addEventListener("click", handleKeyboardClick);

Create a function called removeSnowmanPart(). This function will remove a single snowman part associated with those main classes each time the user guesses a letter that isn’t one of the hidden letters.
To remove the snowman parts from top-to-bottom, we need to remove the first item from the array each time removeSnowmanPart() is called. To remove the first item from an array, you use the Array.shift() method. We’ll store the removed item (which represents a CSS class) in a variable called snowmanPart.
Next, create a variable called partsToRemove to store these parts. Get the HTML element that represents the snowmanPart using document.querySelectorAll(). Remember, snowmanPart is a CSS selector (it starts with a dot) and querySelectorAll() will give us an array-like object of all HTML elements matching the selector we give it.

function removeSnowmanPart() {
    var snowmanPart = snowmanParts.shift();
    var partsToRemove = document.querySelectorAll(snowmanPart);
}

The final step of our function definition will be to loop through all of the partsToRemove and remove each part from the HTML document. To do this, we can create a for...of loop and then call the element.remove() function on each partToRemove. The element.remove() function removes an HTML element from the page.

function removeSnowmanPart() {
    var snowmanPart = snowmanParts.shift();
    var partsToRemove = document.querySelectorAll(snowmanPart);
    for (var partToRemove of partsToRemove) {
        partToRemove.remove();
    }
}

Before we can determine if the user guessed incorrectly, we’ll need to edit the checkForMatch() function to return a boolean value: true or false. We start hasMatch as false, and only change it to true if there is a match when we are comparing the clickedLetter to the hiddenLetter in the for...of loop.
The removeSnowmanPart() function should be called only when the user doesn’t guess the correct hidden letter in our handleKeyboardClick() function. The checkForMatch() function will return true if we found a match, and false otherwise.

function checkForMatch(clickedLetter) {
    var hiddenLetterElements = document.querySelectorAll(".hidden");
    var hasMatch = false;
    for (var hiddenLetterElement of hiddenLetterElements) {
        var hiddenLetter = hiddenLetterElement.textContent;
        if (hiddenLetter === clickedLetter) {
            hiddenLetterElement.classList.remove("hidden");
            hasMatch = true;
        }
    }
    return hasMatch;
}

Finally, in our handleKeyboardClick() function, we can create a variable called hasMatch and store the returned value from the checkForMatch() function. Remember, this variable is either the boolean value true or false.
We can then use that value in a conditional statement and call the removeSnowmanPart() function if there was no match. The ! operator means “not”, so we’re saying “If there’s no match, remove a snowman part” in this code sample.

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
    var clickedElement = event.target;
    if (!clickedElement.classList.contains("letter") || clickedElement.classList.contains("selected")) return;
    clickedElement.classList.add("selected");
    var clickedLetter = clickedElement.textContent;
    var hasMatch = checkForMatch(clickedLetter);
    if (!hasMatch) {
        removeSnowmanPart();
    }
}

Step 3 Output

Step 4: Check if the player loses

A game is no fun without winners and losers! In this step, we’ll show a message if the user guesses incorrectly too many times and the snowman melts before they guess the hidden word.

We’ll create a function called checkForLoser() to check if the snowman has melted and the user loses. You lose when the snowman has melted, and in our program we’re removing a part from the snowmanParts array every time a user guesses a letter that isn’t in the hidden word. The snowman will be “melted” when there are no parts left in the snowmanParts array. We can check if there are no parts left in the snowmanParts array using a conditional statement and by comparing the length property of the snowmanParts array to 0.

function checkForLoser() {
    if (snowmanParts.length === 0) {
    }
}

In our conditional statement, we’ll add two messages to the page. The first will replace all the HTML in the snowman-container element with the text “You lost, game over!”. The second will replace all of the HTML in the keyboardContainer with the text “The word was: [RANDOM WORD]”. The RANDOM WORD will be whatever value is stored in the randomWord variable. Note that we can query and adjust the snowman-container on a single line since we don’t already have a reference to that HTML element stored in a variable.

function checkForLoser() {
    if (snowmanParts.length === 0) {
        document.querySelector("#snowman-container").innerHTML = "<h2>You lost, game over!</h2>";
        keyboardContainer.innerHTML = `<h2>The word was: ${randomWord}</h2>`; 
    }
}

Now that our checkForLoser() function is working, we need to call it whenever the user clicks a key on the keyboard and the letter doesn’t match a letter in the hidden word. We’ve already got a conditional statement in the handleKeyboardClick() function to check if the user didn’t guess a matching letter, so we can call our checkForLoser() function after the removeSnowmanPart() function. This will ensure that we only check if the snowman is melted after removing a snowman part.

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
    var clickedElement = event.target;
    if (!clickedElement.classList.contains("letter") || clickedElement.classList.contains("selected")) return;
    clickedElement.classList.add("selected");
    var clickedLetter = clickedElement.textContent;
    var hasMatch = checkForMatch(clickedLetter);
    if (!hasMatch) {
        removeSnowmanPart();
        checkForLoser();
    }
}

Step 4 Output

Step 5: Check if the player wins

For our final step, we’ll show a message if the player guesses the hidden word without melting the snowman!

First, we’ll create a function called checkForWinner(). A user wins when there are no more hidden letters, so this function’s job will be to show a winning message when there are no more hidden letters on the page.
Create a variable called hiddenLetterElements. To check for hidden letters, we first need a reference to all of the elements on the page with the class hidden. We can use document.querySelectorAll() to get an array of all the HTML elements with the class hidden and store them in hiddenLetterElements.

function checkForWinner() {
    var hiddenLetterElements = document.querySelectorAll(".hidden");
}

We can check the length property of the hiddenLetterElements array to see if there are any more HTML elements with the hidden class on the page. If the length property is 0, there are no more hidden letters on the page.
When there are no more hidden elements, the user wins! We can use the innerHTML property of the keyboardContainer to put a winning message on the page in place of the keyboard.

function checkForWinner() {
    var hiddenLetterElements = document.querySelectorAll(".hidden");
    if (hiddenLetterElements.length === 0) {
        keyboardContainer.innerHTML = "<h2>You win!</h2>";
    }
}

Finally, we need to call our checkForWinner() function every time the user guesses a letter correctly. We’re checking if the user guessed correctly in handleKeyboardClick(). We can add an else clause to our conditional statement at the end of that function and call our checkForWinner() function in the body of the else clause. This guarantees that every time the user has a match, we check if they won.

function handleKeyboardClick(event) {
    var clickedElement = event.target;
    if (!clickedElement.classList.contains("letter") || clickedElement.classList.contains("selected")) return;
    clickedElement.classList.add("selected");
    var clickedLetter = clickedElement.textContent;
    var hasMatch = checkForMatch(clickedLetter);
    if (!hasMatch) {
        removeSnowmanPart();
        checkForLoser();
    } else {
        checkForWinner();
    }
}

Step 5 Output

Your program is complete!

Check out the finished Disappearing Snowman Game.

Download the project files and open app.js to view the completed project.

This is just an example of what you can build when you learn JavaScript. There are plenty of exciting projects you can try and continue to build your skills.

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Have fun and happy holidays!