Academics
ArrayPals
Build the block, find the lots (ages 6-8). Multiplication is rows and columns of little square lots - tile a whole town block, split it into friendly smaller lots, skip-count the rows, and meet the 2ab twin lots years before the (a+b)squared symbols. Spoken out loud, big friendly tiles, no way to lose.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 15 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, asks, 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.
#0d9488 Characters who teach
Meet the cast
ArrayPals is a friendly little town where multiplication is rows and columns of square lots. Mayor Tila the tortoise tends the whole town block, which is made of all its little lots; each friend shows ONE gentle idea with their hands. Everything is spoken, and there is no way to lose - a lot in the wrong place is just a warm 'where else could it go?'
Tila
The whole block - Mayor Tila the tortoise, whose town block is made of all its little square lots; count every lot and you have counted the whole block
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Rift
The friendly split - a clever raccoon who breaks one big block along a straight line into smaller lots, counts each, and adds them back; the whole stays exactly the same, the counting gets easier
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Tenner
Round to the friendly ten - a tall giraffe who reaches a lumpy number UP to its nearest tidy ten for a quick, close guess, then tiles it to be sure
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Skipper
Equal rows, skip-counted - a springy frog who hops along equal rows counting by the row (three, six, nine, twelve); skip-counting the same equal group again and again IS multiplying
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Fence
The fence or the field - a sturdy goat who shows that the fence AROUND the edge and the grass INSIDE are two different counts, not the same number
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Dreamer
The protege - a dreamy fox who sometimes daydreams past the middle lots; the friend the learner helps, by pointing out that every lot must be counted or the whole comes up short
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Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Build the block, find the lots (ages 6-8). Multiplication is rows and columns of little square lots - tile a whole town block, split it into friendly smaller lots, skip-count the rows, and meet the 2ab twin lots years before the (a+b)squared symbols. Spoken out loud, big friendly tiles, no way to lose.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned question kits, 400 questions in all, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
How ArrayPals handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages
For you, the grown-up
The grown-up side of ArrayPals on Spark & Whetstone, our free site for grown-ups: The Maths They Teach Now (the area model). Rows and columns, then city blocks split into lots.
ArrayPals 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
ArrayPals 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