Rookaby Teaches Toddlers Chess

Every lesson is read aloud, so there are no words on screen. Pick the voice: a man, a woman, or both.

Chess your child can learn before they can read.

Rookaby reads every lesson aloud. There is nothing on screen your child has to work out for themselves, no account to make, and nothing to get wrong.

WHO READS Choose a man's voice, a woman's voice, or alternating narrators in Settings. The six chess pieces have their own character voices. Choosing a narrator does not change these character voices. Only one voice speaks at a time. Tap a narrator choice to hear a sample before you decide.

FROM AGE TWO, FREE

• First board activity. Move Bonk on the screen by dragging, or tap the rook and then a square. Take turns with your child; no chess set needed.
• Watch the pieces. The six of them potter about on their own, and it ends by itself.
• Meet the pieces. Touch one and it says its name and makes its sound.
• Two houses. Cream ones live here, dark ones live there.
• Whose shadow? Match a piece to its own silhouette.
• Take turns. One drum between you, and a voice that says whose turn it is.
• The board. An on-screen board with every piece and nothing to achieve.

FROM AGE THREE Six characters, six stories. Bonk the rook is too wide for a corner, so Bonk walks only the straight roads. Peppel the pawn is a seed, and a seed grows one way only. Every story answers WHY a piece moves the way it does, because a reason is something a three-year-old can rebuild and a rule is something they forget. After each story comes a game with that one piece and one star to reach.

FROM AGE FOUR Once each piece's walk makes sense, the rules of the game arrive: how you take a piece, how a king gets out of trouble, and what catching him for good looks like. Take one, Get Poffel out, Catch the king. They come as puzzles and never as a match. Every board has an answer, and the app works it out before your child sees it, so there is no position to get stuck in and no opponent to lose to.

GAMES FOR TWO To the other side is a race across the board with your pawns, and it is free. Then Rookaby tells you which piece to put where on your own wooden board and reads the lesson aloud while your child plays on wood with you.

NOTHING TO GET WRONG No timers. No points. No three stars. No way to lose and no way to get stuck. A wrong tap gets an answer, never a buzzer. Your child can hear the same story forty times, and nothing runs out.

HEALTHY SCREEN TIME, BY DESIGN Pediatric guidance for this age asks for screen time that is short, good, and shared, without autoplay or reward loops. Rookaby is built to fit inside it: the watch mode ends on its own and nothing plays next, there are no points or streaks, the turn-taking game seats you beside your child, and the AAP and WHO sources are listed in the app.

NOTHING COLLECTED No accounts, no analytics, no advertising. Rookaby asks for nothing and sends nothing; the purchases are handled by the App Store itself. Anything that costs money sits behind a question only a grown-up can answer.

WHAT COSTS MONEY Stage 0 stays free. Rookaby Everything opens all stories, games, the real-board coach and puzzles in one purchase. The base option remains available. Base owners buy only the missing puzzles. Existing purchases stay valid. No subscription.