STEM
CountingPals
Number Sense + Early Addition for Ages 5-7 — subitizing, counting, comparing, one-digit addition. Calc Jr (younger calculator-monster) guides daily 15-min math routines.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, praises, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
#A8D5F0 Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
CountingPals's 3-character supporting cast (Wave 29 — Younger Cluster Variant; ages 5-7) embodies early-math primitives as concrete-physical math-friends — one-to-one tap-counting (Tappa), same-sized-hops counting (Hop), grouping + same-vs-different (Pile). Following the MotifLab Wave 7 hero-as-protagonist pattern adapted for ages 5-7, Calc Jr (calculator-monster mascot + AI math coach) remains the protagonist + math-garden host; cast members are math-garden friends Calc Jr visits with the kid. Cast fades by kit 7 so kit 8 (reflection) is the kid's own counting work. Catchphrases ≤6 words repeated identically (`One thing. One number.` / `Same hop. Every time.` / `Same goes with same.`). CRITICAL math-anxiety prevention gate: no character ever says wrong / incorrect / try harder; no time-pressure on counting; counting is for thinking not racing; no kid-to-kid comparisons. Parent co-play affordance: cast intros explicitly invite grown-ups. Tappa replaces initially-proposed Counta per HARD collision with DiscreteQuest Wave-4 squirrel-cast Counta. Hop SOFT-collision with WitQuest Wave 22 cast Hop allowed per registry rule 3 (different role / domain / visual register; flag for cross-app audio-context audit).
Tappa
One-to-one correspondence — soft russet squirrel-kid who taps each item as she counts; trail of glowing number-dots above each tapped item
Hop
Same-sized jumps / early addition seed — cream-and-grey rabbit-kid whose hops are always exactly the same length; visible dotted-line jump-arcs as equal arcs
Pile
Grouping + same-vs-different — plump warm-amber hedgehog-kid who scoops + groups + piles things into matching bunches; tidy piles of 3s + 4s + 5s on color-coded sorting-mat
What's inside
Learning goal
Number Sense + Early Addition for Ages 5-7 — subitizing, counting, comparing, one-digit addition. Calc Jr (younger calculator-monster) guides daily 15-min math routines.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned kits × 25 questions = 400 questions per app, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
Mentored by Calc Jr — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How CountingPals handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ No ads, no in-app purchases — you pay once
- ✅ COPPA compliant under the 2026 FTC amendments
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
CountingPals runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
CountingPals is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch