Three small learning apps I built for my ten-year-old. They are free, there is nothing to sign up for, and your child's work stays on your device. Take them if they're useful.
One evening I tried to teach my daughter fractions, decimals and percents. It ended with her crying that she was dumb, and me angry about her attitude.
She is ten, she is bright, and she would rather play than practise — which I understand, because I hated it too. I don't want her grinding through stacks of practice problems just to get faster at them (in Chinese we call it 刷题). I want her to understand what a number means, and to know how to work it out.
So instead of pushing harder, I built her an app. Then another for vocabulary, one word a day, so that by high school she will have met thousands of words without ever cramming. Then a third for spelling, after her teacher mentioned she drops letters when she rushes.
She opens them on her own now. That still surprises me — and it's the only measure I care about.
One word each day — what it means, how to say it, a sentence, and often the quote it came from. Badges, puzzles and a streak that forgives a missed day. Slow on purpose: a word a day for a few years is thousands of words, without a single cram session.
Open Word a DayThe one that started it. A ten-day course that teaches why ¼ and 0.25 and 25% are the same amount, using pizza and pocket money, with the rules coming last on purpose. Then endless practice, real calculations across all three, and a test on day eleven.
Open Three Ways to Say ItA flip card shows the meaning and a row of empty letter boxes. Type the word, flip the card, see whether you got it. Anything missed lands on a Tricky list with a hint, and comes back until it sticks. It reads the word aloud, the way a real spelling test does.
Open Spell It, Flip ItThere are no accounts and no passwords — the name your child types is how their work is saved. Three things worth doing on the first day:
If a browser gets cleared, or you move to a new phone, just type the same name again — the progress comes back. The PIN is what stops anyone else doing the same. One PIN covers all three apps.
The fractions course spends nine days on what the numbers mean and gives the four conversion rules on the last one. Shortcuts are safe only after the picture makes sense.
No timers, no lives, no streak that dies on a holiday. A missed day is forgiven automatically. Badges, once earned, stay earned. Getting something wrong just brings it back later.
These are built for the gap between dinner and bed, not for a Saturday of worksheets. The point is that a child keeps opening them — which, in my house, they do.
These three exist because I knew exactly what my daughter was stuck on. If your child is stuck on something specific — long division, times tables, reading comprehension, kanji, verb conjugations — I can talk it through with you and build something shaped around that.
Tell me what they're stuck on:
hello@chloelouzhang.app