What it is
Akadio Kids is a maths and analytical-thinking game for children around 4 and 5. Its guide is Tosbi, a turtle in glasses and a graduation cap. Most children this age can’t read, so nothing in the game depends on reading: every instruction is spoken in Turkish, and the screen is made of big, tappable things to count, compare and sort. It is designed for a tablet held sideways.
I wanted it to be calm rather than loud: fewer flashing rewards, more attention to how a child actually learns, and room for the moment when an answer is still forming.
How it teaches
The curriculum moves from counting to five, through quick “flash” recognition of small quantities, numerals, numbers up to ten, comparison, patterns and sorting, to part-whole thinking, first additions and first subtractions. Each step is a short game with a name a child can remember: Dokun & Say (tap and count), Şimşek Bakış (lightning glance), On’luk Çerçeve (the ten-frame), Besle Canavarı (feed the monster), Saklambaç (hide and seek).
Underneath, a few rules from learning research do the quiet work. A question answered wrong comes back two or three questions later, dressed differently, and returns again at the start of later lessons through Leitner-style spaced repetition. Difficulty adapts per skill on a five-step scale. Hints come in stages, first hearing it again, then a visual nudge, then the answer shown. There are no hearts to lose and nothing to fail.
Caring for the grown-ups too
Parents set a daily time limit, and when it runs out Tosbi simply falls asleep. Off-screen tasks bring the learning into the room, and a parent approves them. Behind a separate parent password there is a dashboard: a learning curve, a map of which numbers are solid and which are confused, a calendar heatmap and plain-language insights about what to practise next.
Where it stands
Akadio Kids is live at alicanzade.com/akadiokids and is the project I commit to most often. My newest work there is an original story adventure, with its own characters and illustrated scenes, for children a little older.