Academics
BarPals
Draw the story. Cubes fuse into a bar, you draw the bar yourself, and the number sentence builds beside it. Then Muddle the dodo trusts the word “more” and gets it wrong — and you fix it. Part and whole within 20, ages 6–8.
Built for sittings of about 15 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
#1d4ed8 Distributed-narrative cast
Meet the cast
Each BarPal is one move of the bar model. Bundle holds the parts together and names the whole. Jut lives where one bar sticks out past the other. Sawyer cuts equal pieces. Q lands on what we don't know. Muddle the dodo tries hard, trusts the word “more”, and needs your help.
Bundle
(Mentor, a beaver) - holds the parts together and names the whole; asks, never tells
Jut
A gecko - lives in the piece where one bar sticks out past the other: the difference
Sawyer
An ant - cuts a bar into equal units, every piece the same length
Q
A moth - lands on the part we don't know yet, and stays until we find it
Muddle
A dodo - draws the story wrong on purpose (trusts a keyword, cuts unequal pieces) so you can fix it
What's inside
Learning goal
Draw the story. Cubes fuse into a bar, you draw the bar yourself, and the number sentence builds beside it. Then Muddle the dodo trusts the word “more” and gets it wrong — and you fix it. Part and whole within 20, ages 6–8.
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 Bundle — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How BarPals 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
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ Parental controls + session limits + content filters built in
BarPals 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
BarPals 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