Playtime: games for kids after lessons, opened with a ticket

Seven games in Playtime

Four quick games take a few minutes; the other three are puzzles that go from easy to hard. Every game is played with one finger, and the question is read aloud, so a child who cannot read yet plays on their own.

• Letter Bubbles: for 30 seconds, your child pops the bubbles carrying the letter the app reads out. Straight after a Japanese lesson the bubbles switch to hiragana, so playing is also a little revision.
• Catch the Color: your child catches the colour they hear.
• Count and Tap: your child taps as many stars as the app asks for.
• Glow Doodle: everything they draw glows. It is always open, no ticket needed.
• Maze: 150 puzzles in Day maze and 150 in Night maze, each with exactly one way out; each mode has 30 large-grid puzzles that only appear on iPad.
• Join the numbers: 100 pictures, each number read aloud in the app's language: Vietnamese, Japanese, English, Korean or Chinese.
• Flip cards: 100 puzzles over 193 national flags; a match says the country's name.

For Maze, Join the numbers and Flip cards, one ticket is one puzzle. How small children get on with mazes, and why every one has a single way out, is in mazes for preschoolers.

You choose how many lessons earn a ticket

Settings (behind a question for grown-ups) has five rules. The rule is set for the whole device; tickets are counted for each child.

• By age: under 5, one lesson earns a ticket; 5 and over, two lessons.
• 1, 2 or 3 lessons: the same rule for every child.
• Free play: no tickets, every game is open.

Step by step with screenshots: play ticket rules.

Night maze challenge, and the rules behind Playtime

• Night maze challenge: each dead end asks one three-choice question. Math is on by default; a parent can switch each child to one of the five languages, or turn it off.
• Ten levels, about 15,000 questions: ten right in a row moves up a level, three wrong in a row moves down one so your child does not give up. Levels 1 and 2 work for a child who cannot read yet, and results stay on the device.
• Mazes that grow: 120 day and 120 night mazes on every device, plus 30 larger ones of each on iPad. After the first 20, difficulty grows through longer paths, more junctions and deeper wrong turns, not smaller squares.

Basis: the games follow design rules rather than a teaching standard. Every maze has exactly one solution, proved by a solver before release; numbers are read aloud as they are joined, using counting rules checked for each language; stickers come in a fixed order, with no random prize boxes; and there is no streak to lose and no countdown to beat.

The full curriculum: every subject's path and the standards behind it →