Helping your child

Start one grade below where your child is at school, and move up quickly if it is easy.

This feels wrong to most parents, and it is still the right advice. A child who succeeds at ten easy lessons builds the habit of expecting to succeed. A child who starts too high learns that this app is where they feel stupid, and they will not come back to it.

1. Open the first chapter of the grade below. It is free, so this costs nothing to try.
2. If your child finishes it comfortably in one sitting, move up a grade and repeat.
3. Stop when a chapter takes real effort. That is the right level.

1. Ages 4 to 6: ten minutes. One lesson. Stop while they still want more.
2. Ages 7 to 10: fifteen to twenty minutes, one or two lessons.
3. Ages 11 and up: twenty to thirty minutes, as long as they are choosing to be there.

Little and often beats long and rare. Fifteen minutes four times a week does more than an hour on a Sunday.

This is the moment that matters most, and the instinct to help immediately is usually the wrong one. Try this order:

1. Wait. Count to twenty in your head before saying anything. Most children solve it in that time.
2. Point at the picture, do not explain it. “What happens if you drag that to 5?” is better than telling them the answer.
3. Let them get it wrong. A wrong answer here costs nothing — the lesson explains and lets them try again. Being wrong and then right is how it sticks.
4. Go back a lesson. Being stuck usually means something earlier is not solid, not that today is too hard.
5. Stop for today. Tomorrow is remarkably effective. Nothing is lost.

Try to avoid “I was never any good at math either.” It is meant kindly and it gives a child permission to stop trying. “This bit is hard, let us look at it again” does the same comforting job without the exit.

1. Your child explains an answer without being asked to.
2. They get something wrong and try again without being told to.
3. They ask to do another one.

None of those is about scores. A chapter check is the slower measure — if it goes well a week after the chapter finished, it is genuinely learned.

Math is what most families come for, but a child who reads well finds every other subject easier, including math word problems. If a math session goes badly, a reading lesson is a good way to end the day having succeeded at something.