Digi Dinos' contribution to the community

A learning app for children from age three, read in their parents' own voice

Q: Does a child's voice leave the device?

No. Recognition runs on the device itself and the recording stays there for a parent to play back or delete. The feature is off by default.

Colouring, free drawing, dot-to-dot, handwriting, alphabet boards in five languages, Vietnamese phonics, Japanese script, Korean Hangul, first Chinese characters, English, early maths, piano and stories read aloud — all in one app for iPad, iPhone and Android. A child can get going on their own; you don't have to sit alongside for every minute.

Free, and free in the full sense: no subscription, nothing to buy inside, no advertising, and not one lesson held back until you pay. This is what Digi Dinos gives back to the community, not a source of revenue.

Free
No advertising
No in-app purchases
No account needed
Works without a network

Get it on the App Store Get it on Google Play See what a child learns

iPad and iPhone (iOS 15 and later) · Android phones and tablets (7.0 and later) · Rated 4+ · Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese

The Dino Kids home screen on iPad: the Read stories in your own voice invitation, four large tiles for Art, Learn languages, Math and Music, plus the Playtime strip

250+pictures to colour, 16 themes
500folk tales in five languages
354characters with stroke order
609syllables to build

Why Dino Kids is free

Dino Kids is what Digi Dinos Joint Stock Company gives back to the community. We want every family to have one more option for teaching a child without weighing up the cost — and more time to sit down, play and learn alongside them.

Learning with no price tag

No subscription, nothing to buy inside, no advertising. Every lesson is open the first time a child taps it, and nothing they tap can spend your money.

More time beside your child

Parents are usually short of time with their child, not short of worksheets. You record the lessons in your own voice, and once a week the app tells you what they managed.

Digi Dinos carries the cost

Digi Dinos pays for the servers, the recorded voices and the content. There is no third-party analytics or advertising code in the app, so no child's data is being sold.

Stories: 500 folk tales in five languages

A hundred tales in each language, each from its own culture — Tấm Cám and Thánh Gióng in Vietnamese; 桃太郎 and かぐや姫 in Japanese; Goldilocks and Jack and the Beanstalk in English. Nothing is translated from one culture into another, so whichever language a child is learning, they hear that language's own stories. There are also 100 Korean folk tales in Korean and 100 Chinese folk tales in Simplified Chinese, read aloud too.

The sentence being read lights up with the narration; tap any sentence to hear it again.
Three speeds 0.6× · 0.8× · 1×, starting at 0.8× for small ears.
Japanese stories carry hiragana readings (furigana) all the way through, and Chinese stories carry pinyin over every character.
New picture books: one page per sentence, turning with the narration; swipe or tap the edge and the voice follows.

The picture book 桃太郎 on iPad: the grandmother carrying home a giant peach, with the sentence and its hiragana readings under the picture — Picture books: a page per sentence

Goldilocks and the Three Bears on iPad, the sentence being read highlighted in yellow, the player with three speed buttons below — The sentence being read lights up

The list of Japanese stories on iPad: 桃太郎, 浦島太郎 and かぐや姫 carry a Picture book label — The Japanese shelf

The first three picture books are 桃太郎, 浦島太郎 and かぐや姫, and more are added over time. The stories are our own retellings of folk tales; the pictures are made with AI image tools and chosen by the project.

Read the 100 folk tales on the web →

Stories in your voice

The voice a child wants at bedtime is the one sitting next to them. Now you can read the stories yourself, in your own voice — record once, and your child can listen night after night.

Pick a story and read each sentence on the screen out loud: tap Record, read, tap Stop — the app saves it and moves on to the next sentence. You can stop halfway and carry on later; until then your child hears the usual narration.

Finish a story and it plays in your voice. When your child opens it, they hear you instead of the app voice; the sentence still lights up and picture books still turn their own pages.
Works without a network. The recording lives on the device — good for bedtime and for trips.
Record on one device, hear it on another. With a family account, recordings sync to the iPad, iPhone or Android device on the same account.
Redo any sentence you don't like. Each one has a Play back button; switch a story's recording off and the app voice is back, with the recording kept.
Your child can't open the microphone alone. The way in is from the home screen, the top of the story list, the 🎙️ button on the story screen and Settings › Story voice — all behind the parental gate.

The Your voice for stories screen on iPad: The Three Little Pigs, sentence 4 of 30 in large type, 3 of 30 sentences recorded, Previous, Play back and Next buttons and a round Record button

Lessons in your family's voice

Your child learned to speak by listening to you. Yet every literacy app reads in a synthetic voice — correct, even, and belonging to nobody in the house.

Dino Kids lets you record your own voice for the lessons. A child hears their mother or father, in the accent of their own region, and listens far more closely because of it. We think this is the most important thing in the whole app.

It is something you add, though, not a set-up step standing between your child and the app: over 3,000 recordings ship inside it, so every lesson is already spoken aloud from the first minute.

Whatever you record is what gets used. Anything not yet recorded still plays as before.
Record only what your child is on. Pick the subject and the group, then Record in a row.
The praise is yours too. Write your own wording and record that as well.
Record once, hear it everywhere. Record on an iPhone and it plays on the iPad or an Android tablet.
Change your mind any time. Switch one recording off and the synthetic voice is back; the recording is kept.

The parent's voice screen on iPad: the English letters, each with a Record button, and a Record in a row button

What a child learns

The home screen has four large tiles — Art, Learn languages, Math and Music — plus a Playtime strip. Learn languages holds five languages — Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese — and you choose which of them each child sees. The Vietnamese and maths work follow Vietnam's Grade 1 curriculum and its school-readiness syllabus. A child picks what they like and works for as long as they want to.

Colouring a strawberry on iPad with the paint bucket, the 12-colour palette and six tools

Art

Colouring, colour mixing, free drawing and dot-to-dot

Thick, closed outlines, so a three-year-old's finger stays inside the lines. Works with a finger, an Apple Pencil or an ordinary stylus.

Colouring over 250 pictures in 16 themes; 87 ship inside the app and the rest download by themselves.
Colour mixing like a real paint box: blue and yellow make green, kept in the child's own paint box.
Free drawing on blank paper, with 34 stamp shapes from circles and stars to a cat or a house.
Dot-to-dot: close the loop and the shape fills itself; 100 guided puzzles from easy to hard.

250+ pictures · 16 themes · 30 steps of undo

More about the colouring app →

🇻🇳 Vietnamese

The Vietnamese alphabet, handwriting and Grade 1 phonics

Taught the way a classroom teacher does it: the child joins a first sound to a rime and a tone while the app reads each step — tờ – oan – toan – sắc – toán.

Alphabet board of 29 cards Aa–Yy: tap to hear the sound, then an example word.
Handwriting in capitals, lower case and tone marks, in stroke order, with the stroke to redo pointed out.
Spelling rules c/k/q, g/gh and ng/ngh shown right on the buttons, so nothing is learnt wrong.
Listening to your child read: recognition stays on the device; off by default.

29 letters · 40 sounds · 145 rimes · 609 syllables

🇯🇵 Japanese

Hiragana, katakana and JLPT vocabulary

The kana board lays out all 104 hiragana and 46 katakana, one button to swap. Tap a character to hear it, then an example word — “a … あめ”.

Kana handwriting in stroke order, marked stroke by stroke as in the Vietnamese section.
JLPT words and grammar N5–N1 for older siblings, meanings in three languages, a 10-question quiz.
Japanese stories with readings: a child who reads hiragana can read the whole tale.
A Japanese interface one switch away, so the characters appear in their own context.

150 kana · 387 words · 81 grammar patterns

More about learning languages →

🇯🇵 Kanji

Japanese kanji: 2,141 characters, Levels 1–10

All the jōyō kanji, in 10 levels that follow the school years in Japan — Level 1 is the 80 kanji of grade 1. Each has on and kun readings, stroke count, radical and meanings in five languages.

Kanji cards with words and example sentences for each reading.
Handwriting in stroke order, checked for shape, stroke count and order.
Practice tests by level: reading, writing, radicals, stroke counts.
Look up all 2,141 kanji on the web today.

2,141 kanji · 10 levels · 4,239 words

Look up 2,141 kanji on the web →

🇬🇧 English

English for a beginner

An alphabet board of 26 cards Aa–Zz: tap one to hear the letter's name, then an example word — “ay … apple”, with a picture for a child who cannot read yet.

Counting 0–20: the numeral, a row of countable dots and the English word on one card.
Handwriting A–Z in capitals and lower case, marked stroke by stroke.
22 Latin letters share one set of strokes with Vietnamese, so an a is written one way.
English and American folk tales such as Goldilocks and The Little Red Hen, read in English.

26 letters · numbers 0–20 · 52 letters to write

More about learning letters →

🇰🇷 Korean

Hangul, counting and writing

A Hangul board in two tabs, consonants and vowels: tap a letter to hear its name, then an example word with a picture — ㄱ “기역” … 고양이 (cat).

40 letters: 14 basic and 5 double consonants, 10 basic and 11 combined vowels.
Consonants are read by name (기역, 니은…), vowels as the syllable you hear (아, 야…).
Counting 1–20 in Sino-Korean numbers (일, 이, 삼…), the same reading as the number-join game, with romanisation for the adult alongside.
Hangul writing top to bottom, left to right, in stroke order and marked stroke by stroke.

40 letters · numbers 1–20 · 40 letters to write

🇨🇳 Chinese

First Chinese characters, counting and writing

39 everyday characters in Simplified Chinese, each with pinyin, a picture and an example word, read aloud in Mandarin — 月 yuè … 月亮 (moon).

Four groups: the numbers 一 to 十, easy characters (大小上下), people and animals (人口手牛), nature (日月山水).
Stroke order follows the mainland Chinese standard; where it differs from the Japanese order, as in 耳 and 田, the strokes are reordered.
Counting 1–20 read in Mandarin — 一, 二 … 二十 — with pinyin under each number.
Writing in stroke order, marked stroke by stroke like the other alphabets.

39 characters · 4 groups · numbers 1–20

Word cards

999 picture words in five languages

Each card has a picture of something familiar, with its word below in the languages your child learns — Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese — and every line is read aloud.

26 everyday topics: animals, fruit, vegetables, the kitchen, the train station, the airport, vehicles…
Swipe and listen: moving to a card reads its first line; tapping the picture reads every line in turn.
Chinese has pinyin over every character; Japanese is written in kana, easy for young readers.
Review brings back cards your child has seen, the least-seen first.

999 words · 26 topics · 5 languages

See and print all 999 cards on the web →

Math

Maths and school readiness

Five stages from easy to hard, following the school-readiness syllabus — enough to start Grade 1 on familiar ground.

Shapes: naming shapes, counting them, putting two pieces together.
Numbers 0 to 10: recognising numerals, matching groups, colouring by number.
Comparing, adding and taking away within ten, one small step at a time.
Reading and writing from the same syllabus, plus digits 0–9 in stroke order.

40 maths lessons · 5 stages · 71 reading and writing lessons

More about maths →

Playing a song on iPad: notes fall onto the key to press, each key naming Do Re Mi with the letter C D E

Music

Piano from zero

Notes fall down the exact key column they name, as tall as they are long — a child sees where a finger goes without reading note names.

One octave at a time so each key is wide enough for a small finger; keys show Do Re Mi with C D E.
Practice waits for the key; Perform keeps tempo but only counts the notes caught.
A tempo button — tortoise, hare, horse; songs that span many keys turn the screen landscape.
Free play over three octaves, and parents can import the family's own songs from MusicXML.

27 lessons · 6 stages · 100 songs

More about piano →

Playtime

Playtime after lesson time

Finish a lesson and a sticker drops into the bag; enough lessons earn a ticket. One ticket opens one round, every round ends on its own, and there is no countdown clock.

Four quick games: letter bubbles, colour catching, count-and-tap, glow drawing.
Mazes: 100 levels growing with the child, each with exactly one way out.
Join the numbers: 100 pictures, each number read aloud in the app's language — Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean or Chinese.
Flip cards over 193 national flags; a match says the country's name.

72 stickers · 7 games · 300 levels · 193 flags

Three minutes to start

There is nothing to configure. Install it, name your child, hand over the device.

Install and create a profile

A child can start with no account at all. A profile needs only a name, a picture and the languages your child will learn — no date of birth. If you use a real photo of your child, it stays on the device and is never uploaded.

Your child picks a subject

Four large tiles and a Playtime strip. A child who cannot read yet still finds what they want by picture and colour, without being shown the way.

Record your voice when you can

This step is optional, and it can be done gradually. A few minutes each evening and the lessons slowly move over to your family's voice.

What to do today — and how you know where your child is

The app picks three things a day for your child, and once a week it tells you what they got done. Nothing is locked: the plan sits on top as a suggestion, and every subject below stays wide open.

Three things a day, from their own progress

The first is usually the letter they are getting wrong most, one tap away. The other two rotate through the subjects. Skipping all three is fine, and there is no cross anywhere.

A 7-day summary for you

Minutes, days, how it compares with the week before, and three letters worth practising next week. Worked out on the device, behind the parental gate, sent nowhere.

A daily reminder, if you want one

One notification a day at a time you choose, written for you and not for your child. Off by default, switched on in Settings behind the parental gate.

Safe to hand over

The real user of this app is a child who cannot read and who usually holds the device in one hand. Nearly every design decision starts there.

No ads, no pop-ups No banners, no reward videos, no interstitials. Nothing pulls a child out of the lesson.

No in-app purchases No subscription, no lessons unlocked by paying. Whatever a child taps, it spends nothing.

No tracking, no analytics The app has no third-party analytics or advertising kit, and never reads the advertising identifier.

A child's voice stays put Recognition runs on the device; the recording stays there for you to play back or delete.

Controls behind an adults' gate Unlock lessons per child, set lessons per play ticket, turn the microphone on or off — behind a sum.

Never zero stars What has not been reached is drawn as an outline — no ✗, no red. A child sees what is left, not a fail.

Sized for a three-year-old Touch targets of at least 88 pt, and a finger resting on the glass while drawing is fine.

A profile for each child Picture shelf, progress, paint box, badges and languages to learn are kept apart per child and sync across devices. A real photo of your child stays on the device.

A few more screens

The interface is available in Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean and Simplified Chinese, switchable inside the app.

Tap a picture to see it full size.

Picking a child on iPad: two profiles, Mia and Leo, with the language picker in the corner — A profile for each child

The home screen on iPad: the Three things today card, the bedtime-story invitation, four subject tiles and the Playtime strip — A home screen of four big tiles

Learn languages on iPad: five cards, English, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese — Choosing a language to learn

The Art menu on iPad: Coloring, Free drawing, Dot-to-dot, Mix colors and the picture shelf — Five things to do in Art

Mixing colours on iPad: pick a few colours, then press Mix — Mixing colours like real paint

Free drawing on iPad with pencil, brush and glitter pen — Blank paper and four pens

A guided dot-to-dot puzzle on iPad — Guided dot-to-dot

Writing the letter E on iPad: two strokes done, arrows showing the third — Handwriting in stroke order

JLPT vocabulary and grammar on iPad, filtered from N5 to N1 — JLPT vocabulary, N5 to N1

The piano path on iPad: six stages, three stars on every lesson — 27 piano lessons in 6 stages

The number-join map on iPad: the 1–10 stage with umbrella, leaf, star, heart and crown, then the 11–20 stage — 100 number-join pictures

Settings on iPad: parental controls, a five-way interface language choice, sound, playtime and voice — Parental controls in Settings

Questions parents ask

Is Dino Kids free?

Yes. The app is free on the App Store and Google Play, with no subscription, no in-app purchases and no lesson locked behind a payment.

If it is free, how does Digi Dinos make money from it?

It does not. Dino Kids is what Digi Dinos Joint Stock Company gives back to the community, not a source of revenue. There is no subscription, nothing to buy inside the app, no advertising and no third-party analytics of any kind — so no child's data is being sold either. The company carries the cost of the servers and the content.

Why did Digi Dinos build this?

It began with a question many families face — how to help children keep their mother tongue — and a wish to support the parents working on it. Along the way, we noticed two more things. First, good preschool material almost always arrives with a subscription attached, which makes a child's learning depend on whether the family paid this month; we wanted every family to have one more option without that pressure.

Second, parents are short of time beside their child more than they are short of worksheets. So the app is built to give the two of you a reason to sit together: you record the lessons in your own voice, and once a week the app tells you what your child managed.

What age is it for?

From age three. Buttons, pictures and palettes are built for children who cannot read yet, while the phonics, handwriting and maths follow a Grade 1 curriculum, so five- and six-year-olds still have plenty to work through.

Does it need an internet connection?

Mostly not. Lessons, the built-in pictures, the lesson voices and the text of all 500 stories live on the device — useful in the car, on a plane or away from home. A network is needed at three moments: the first time a child opens a story, to fetch its narration and, for a picture book, its pictures (once fetched they play back offline); when the app pulls down new lessons and pictures; and to sync between an iPad, an iPhone and an Android device if your family has an account.

Are there advertisements in the app?

No banners, no reward videos, no interstitials. The app also contains no third-party analytics, crash reporting or advertising tracker.

Where do the stories come from, and who made the pictures?

The plots are public-domain folk tales from each culture; the wording is our own retelling, written for children from age three, with the violence of the originals softened. The narration is a Google Cloud synthetic voice. The picture-book illustrations are made with AI image tools, one picture per sentence, and each one is chosen by the project. Picture books are being added over time.

How do parents record their own voice?

The adults-only area has a recording screen: pick the subject (Vietnamese, English, Japanese, Korean or Chinese), then the group your child is working on, or tap Record in a row to go through the items one after another. You read each sound, the app trims the silence at both ends, and that recording replaces the synthetic voice. Anything not yet recorded still plays as before, so there is no rush.

Does a child's voice leave the device?

No. Recognition runs on the very device the child is holding, and the recording stays there for you to play back or delete. The feature is off by default. The full detail is in our privacy policy.

Can two children share one app?

Yes. Each child has their own profile with a separate picture shelf, paint box, progress and badges. One account works across the family's iPad, iPhone and Android devices.

Can I choose which languages my child learns?

Yes. Each child's profile, behind the parental gate, has a “Languages to learn” setting: tick any of Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese. When you add a new child you pick at least one. Learn languages then shows only those, and if you pick just one, the tile opens that subject straight away.

Languages you untick are not deleted, only hidden from the list — tick them again and they are back. The language of the app's own screens (Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean or Simplified Chinese) is set separately.

Is signing in required?

No. The first screen offers “Start without an account”, and a child can use every lesson just as with an account. The app still downloads lessons, stories and voices from our server, but sends nothing about your child. An account only makes a child's artwork and progress travel from iPad to iPhone or an Android device, and come back after the device is set up again.

Does the app give my child a learning path?

Yes. The home screen carries a “Three things today” card: three tasks a day, fixed once per child. The first is usually a review of the letter they are getting wrong most — chosen by the app from their own handwriting progress — and the other two rotate through the subjects. The app also counts a daily streak and awards badges. What it deliberately does not do is lock anything: the subjects on the home screen stay open, and nothing happens if your child ignores the plan. For a three-year-old, a greyed-out tile produces tears, not a habit.

Do I have to record my voice before the app is usable?

No. The app ships with over 3,000 recordings on the device — letters, rimes, syllables, numbers, colour names, country names and praise — so every lesson is spoken aloud from the first minute, with nothing for you to set up. “A parent’s voice” is an extra: whatever you record is used, anything you have not recorded still plays as before, and recording nothing at all leaves no lesson missing.

Does the content keep getting updated?

Yes, and without waiting for a store update. Lessons, colouring pictures, stories and picture-book pictures, the piano course, dot-to-dot levels, reading and writing lessons and the narration all live on the server; the app asks “what am I missing?” each time it opens and pulls down what is new. When a subject gets new content, its tile on the home screen carries a “New” flag until your child opens it — per child, so in a house with two children the older one looking does not take the flag away from the younger.

How do I see how my child is doing?

Parental Controls sit at the top of Settings, behind a multiplication question a 3 to 5 year old cannot answer. Inside are the 7-day summary (minutes, days with learning, how it compares with the week before, three letters worth practising next week) and the full statistics: charts by day and week, progress through each alphabet, the letters they get wrong, time spent playing. Every number is worked out on the device from that device’s own data and is sent nowhere.

Does the app remind us to practise?

Yes, if you switch it on. One notification a day at a time you choose, off by default and only reachable behind the parental gate. The wording is for an adult — “Time to learn together” — not for the child, and it never pushes a streak at you. The reminder is scheduled entirely on the device; no server pushes anything.

Looking for an app for one particular thing — kanji, ad-free coloring, stories read aloud? See short answers for each need.

Articles

Notes from the Dino Kids team for parents: on playing and learning with your child at home, and why we built this app.

See all articles →

Install it and hand it over

Free, no advertising, no in-app purchases. Every lesson is there from the first launch.

And if it helps in your house, tell another family about it — that is how something built for the community reaches more children.

Get it on the App Store Get it on Google Play

Any questions? Write to dinokids@digidinos.com