Questions and answers

Grades 2 to 5, roughly ages 7 to 11. When you add a kid, you pick their grade this school year. That's only where the games start: each game moves up or down on its own as they play, so a strong reader who finds fractions hard gets the right level in each.

Everything is free while we test Sapling with families. Later, part of Sapling stays free and Sapling Plus opens the rest for US$25 (plus any sales tax), paid once for your whole home. It's not a subscription, and there are no ads and nothing for kids to buy. We'll post the date here before anything changes.

Market Stall, the first two Island Mysteries cases at each reading level, the first two Island Story chapters, building the island, daily quests, tic-tac-toe and four in a row in the Game Room (plus every Game Room lesson and puzzle) and Gull Glide in the Arcade. Sapling Plus adds the other games, every mystery case and story chapter, the rest of the Game Room and Arcade, and new worlds as they come out.

Yes. Paste your Sprout Plus key into Sapling's Grown-ups, then Sapling Plus, and the price drops to US$15. Buying both at once is US$35. Your Sprout key is only checked on the device; it doesn't unlock Sapling by itself.

Neither: it's per home. One purchase opens everything for every kid on every tablet, phone or computer in your home. After you buy, paste your key (or type its short code) into Grown-ups on each of your family's devices.

No. Nothing on the kids' side is for sale, and shells can't be bought with money. The only way to buy Sapling Plus is from Grown-ups, behind the grown-up PIN.

Yes. Email shawn@lilsprout.app within 30 days of buying and we'll refund it in full. When a purchase is refunded, its key stops working.

Sprout is for ages 3 to first grade: letters, numbers, phonics and pretend play, with everything spoken aloud for kids who can't read yet. Sapling picks up where Sprout ends, with grade 2 to 5 math, reading, spelling, time and coding, and a building game that kids this age want to come back to. They are separate apps with separate saves, made by the same family with the same rules.

Sapling is made by Saw Tech Solutions, the makers of Sprout. Like Sprout, it started as something we wanted for our own kids.

Any tablet, phone or computer with an up-to-date browser: iPad, iPhone, Android, Chromebook, Windows and Mac. The island is 3D, so a device from the last several years works best. Tablets are the sweet spot; phones work too, held either way.

Not yet, and you don't need one. Sapling is a web app: open sapling.lilsprout.app, then add it to your home screen. It then opens full screen and works offline like a regular app. How to add it.

We worked hard to avoid that. In Sapling the skill is the job: a shopkeeper can't finish a sale without making change, a detective can't close a case without finding the sentence that proves it, and a robot won't deliver until the program is right. Shells from good work then go into building, which is the part kids talk about.

After a second wrong try, the game shows the worked answer step by step, then moves on. If a level keeps being hard, the game quietly steps down one level. There are no red X screens, no lost lives in the learning games and nothing taken away.

Shells are earned in the games and spent on pieces for the island: huts, a windmill, a lighthouse, boats and more. A few are spent on Arcade runs. The tree in the middle grows with everything a kid has ever earned, not what they have left, so spending never shrinks it.

Besides Sapling Island there's a Space Station, The Kingdom, Jungle Camp and Arctic Bay. Each has its own characters, mystery cases and story, and the games take on the world's names. Kids can travel between them any time; shells and levels come along, and what they built stays in each world.

No. Characters read every order and question out loud, and there's a speaker button to hear it again. Island Mysteries is the one game built around reading on purpose, and it starts at an easy level with short notes and a read-aloud button.

Open Grown-ups, then the Play report. It shows the last 7 days: minutes each day, rounds in each game, the level each game is on, and skills that are going well or need practice, in plain words. It's made to be screenshot and shared, with a teacher for example.

No personal information leaves your device. Names, progress and everything kids build are saved only in the browser on that device. Sapling sends one anonymous report a day (things like minutes played and rounds per game, with no names and no device ID), and you can turn it off in Grown-ups, then Privacy. The full list.

No. There are no accounts, emails or passwords. A grown-up picks a PIN and adds each kid's first name and grade, on the device, in about a minute.

Never. Sapling has no ads, no chat, no social features, no videos from other sites and no links that lead out of the app.

No. Sapling saves progress in the browser's own storage on your device, which it needs to work.

Sapling is designed so that we don't collect personal information from children at all: there are no accounts, and names and work stay on the device. See our privacy policy for the details.

Yes. The first time you open it on Wi-Fi, Sapling saves its games, voices and 3D models. After that it works on a plane, in the car or anywhere without internet.

Yes. Add each kid in Grown-ups. Each has their own island, shells, levels and play report, and they tap their name on the "Who's playing?" screen. The Game Room also has a two-player mode for playing each other on one device.

Press and hold the "Grown-ups" button at the top for 2 seconds, then type your PIN.

Yes. Set a daily limit for each kid in Grown-ups. When it runs out, the sun sets on their island and the games close until tomorrow. They can still build with the shells they have.

In Grown-ups, use Backup to save a file with every kid's progress and island. Open Sapling on the new device and restore that file. A Sapling Plus key comes along in the backup.

On iPhone and iPad, the home-screen icon keeps its own storage, apart from Safari. Your progress is still in Safari. Save a backup there (Grown-ups, then Backup) and restore it inside the icon.

Sapling updates itself when it's online. Close it fully and open it again to pick up new games and fixes.