Academics
PatchPals
Finish Tila's quilt (ages 3–5). A big square is one small square, two twin ribbons, and a little corner — so the youngest makers FEEL the shape of (a+b)² with their hands, years before the symbols. Wordless, spoken out loud, no way to lose. Best played on a lap, once a week, with a grown-up.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 10 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.
#d1603d Characters who teach
Meet the cast
PatchPals is a little band of quilt friends who help the very youngest makers feel that a big square is made of smaller squares and strips - the shape of (a+b)squared years before the symbols. Tila the tortoise has a quilt to finish; each friend shows ONE gentle idea with their hands. Everything is spoken, and there is no way to lose - a patch in the wrong place is just a warm 'where else could it go?'
Tila
The whole square - a gentle tortoise whose shell is a patch-grid; the finished quilt is made of its parts, and the parts always add back up to the whole
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Miro & Moro
The twin strips - two otters exactly the same size, one just turned the long way; two matching ribbons is the idea of TWO-of-the-same, the coefficient 2
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Kerf
The cut - a gentle beetle whose snip cuts the big square into a small square, two matching strips, and one tiny corner; WHERE you cut is how the whole splits into its parts
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Broody
Making it bigger - an owl who grows a square by adding a strip along two sides and one tiny corner; a bigger square is the old square plus its growth
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Parra
The spatial word - a parrot who says WHERE a patch sits (corner, beside, above, top, bottom); naming the place is how you find it
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Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Finish Tila's quilt (ages 3–5). A big square is one small square, two twin ribbons, and a little corner — so the youngest makers FEEL the shape of (a+b)² with their hands, years before the symbols. Wordless, spoken out loud, no way to lose. Best played on a lap, once a week, with a grown-up.
How PatchPals 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
PatchPals 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
PatchPals 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