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.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 15 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.
Mentored by Bundle
#1d4ed8 Characters who teach
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
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.
Mentored by Bundle — 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
- ✅ 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
For you, the grown-up
The grown-up side of BarPals on Spark & Whetstone, our free site for grown-ups: The Maths They Teach Now (bar diagrams). Draw the story before you sum it; try the bar yourself.
It also tells what BarPals teaches in 2 short courses.