Keeping little EC’s eyes away from screens has been pretty important to us for the last two and a half years. Even when she was tiny, we’d turn her little swing away from the TV if we were watching something while she was with us. She’s not allowed to play with our phones and only when she was sick in the last few months did we sit down with her to watch a movie—she’s seen three now: Ratatouille, Brave, and Dumbo. The selection was based on Netflix availability more than anything, but it helps the cause that those movies aren’t merchandised at all (that I know of) so I can feel more confident that she won’t be mentally immersed in those worlds the way she might be with the princess movies or something more recent. We also sit with her after making popcorn and watch nature documentaries (Sir David Attenborough’s narrative voice is stuck in my head for all time).

But about a month ago, after seeing how well she could handle the concept of letters and sounds, counting and numbers, and sorting, I thought I should find some kind of organized curriculum that would help her and me make some real learning progress. There are no stores around here that would sell workbooks and the stuff that I’ve found dumpster-diving (ok, not literally diving…) is still beyond her level. But I was doing some browsing and I found that the nonprofit behind Khan Academy, which I’ve used and loved for college-level topics, has made an app called Khan Academy Kids that is focused on 2–5 year-olds. So I downloaded it and played with it myself a bit, and thought it would make a fun exercise.

She, of course, loves it. What’s not to love about cute music, animated animal characters, high-pitched voices, colorful videos, and learning? She picked up on the basics quickly: what constitutes a valid tap and a valid drag, for example. Sometimes the things she’s supposed to tap or drag are too small to be easy, and she gets frustrated, but by and large that’s not much of a problem.

The program is made up of a never-ending series of short (5–10 minute) segments that focus on one or a few letters (sounds, words that start with those sounds, tracing the letters, building words from the letters); math concepts (adding and subtracting, mostly by counting and dragging objects); colors, shapes, and sorting; or reading and comprehension exercises. It’s engaging: whenever a video is played, the narrator (a small animated bear) shows up from time to time to ask a question about the video and ask for something to be identified and tapped. It’s adaptive: it learns what she’s mastered and makes the work more difficult. And it’s thorough: I never knew there were so many different ways to reinforce what sound a letter makes. She is learning a lot, it is clear.

Little EC loves it, like I said; though sometimes a little too much. I sit with her, holding the phone, while she plays, and we talk about what she’s doing and I reinforce what the instructions are for the various activities. I also set the time limit: somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on how she’s doing with her frustration or anxiety level. Because interacting with the phone does make her anxious: she starts shifting in her seat, making jerky hand and head motions, and tapping persistently at the screen. Despite doing this for a month, with the same routine, sometimes she still is very upset when it’s time to finish, and her behavior is a little off for a period afterward. I feel as though it’s great for learning, but interacting with the phone is not great for her behavior. I’m hoping that with more ‘exposure therapy’—small doses over an extended period—she’ll become accustomed to it and start reaping the benefits of the technology without the behavioral or attentional drawbacks.

There isn’t a lot of customization available. I set the age of her profile to 3, though she was six months out from that when we started: the activities were just too easy on the 2 level. Some of the activities are persistently too easy, still. We’ve only gotten counting and math exercises up to 5 so far, and she can do up to 20 on her own with little problem. The letters exercises are a bit repetitive, though after a month we just today got introduced to a whole bunch of new letters so hopefully that problem will go away. The design of the curriculum was done in collaboration with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, so I’m inclined to trust them for a while and let the program run its course. If we go another couple months and I think it’s still too easy for her, I’ll bump the age level up again—though that will bring the problem of activities, like writing letters, that require better fine motor skills than she has right now.

In short, I’m hopeful that this program will advance her learning more than I could do with our normal daily activities; that she’ll overcome any addictive-like behaviors with repeated small exposures; and that she’ll start finding more ways to learn on her own as a result of all the new stimulation. It’s too early to tell, of course.