What a session actually looks like.
Ten minutes. No reading required. No typing. Your child opens Atlas and the next thing is already chosen.
In an Atlas session the tutor speaks and the child answers by touching, dragging and tracing — nothing on the screen requires reading or typing, the session runs about ten minutes, and the lesson never needs an internet connection.
Your child opens it.
Atlas greets them by name and shows them where they are on their map. Not a menu, not a course catalogue, not a choice they aren't equipped to make.
The next thing is already chosen.
Does my child need to be able to read to use Atlas?
No. Nothing on the screen requires your child to read. Atlas speaks, draws, animates and sings, and everything is said out loud in the language spoken at home. A five-year-old who does not know a single letter can use it on day one.
Your child answers by touching, dragging and tracing — moving ten blocks into two groups, tracing a numeral, choosing between three pictures. Real manipulation, which is how early mathematics is actually taught, and the only interface that works for a child who cannot yet type a question.
It watches how, not just whether.
Getting it right matters less than how it was got. How many attempts, how long it took, whether a hint was needed. Two children with the same right answer do not always know the same thing.
Atlas separates answered unaided from answered after a hint from answered after being shown, and treats a fully-revealed answer as evidence the child did not know it. Being told is not knowing.
It decides what comes next.
Every few seconds, from the mastery estimate and the map of prerequisites: a new skill to probe, practice at the edge of ability, a review that is coming due, or a foundation that needs repair.
And it can say why in one sentence. "Partitioning ten is shaky, and two-digit addition depends on it."
What happens when there is no signal?
It works with no internet. It gets better when there is some. The session never touches the network — not for a hint, not to check an answer, not to save progress.
Setup needs a connection, once. After that the phone owns its own progress, and when there is a signal again, the progress goes up and new content comes down. If it never comes back, your child keeps learning anyway.
Are there streaks, hearts or timers?
There are none. No streaks, no lives to lose, no leaderboard, no clock running down.
Sessions are short and end on a good note, not on a wall. Five stops, with the end visible from the beginning: there is a stamp, and the map fills in a little. Nobody has to beg for one more.
Your child is deliberately kept at the edge of what they can do, which means they are wrong about one time in seven by design. Any reward that drains on a wrong answer would be punishing them for the tutor working correctly.
You get the report.
Generated on the phone, from the same estimate the tutor is using. What your child can do unaided, what is still shaky, and what Atlas is working on next.
In sentences, not a percentage. Some weeks it will say not much moved, because a report that only ever shows progress is not a report.
If you want to look underneath.
The engine
How it picks what comes next: a probability per skill, and a map of what depends on what.
See how it decides →Works offline
The three moments Atlas uses the network, and why the lesson is not one of them.
See how →A tutor that teaches, on the phone you already own.
One email when Atlas opens. Nothing else.