Penelope Teaches Me How To Do The Math
My daughter teaches me more than I teach her, but making a mobile game together is a learning experience for both of us
I have a daughter. Let’s call her “Penelope.” I don’t like to use her real name on the interweb. She just turned 13.
She is a whiz at math, and a pretty smart cookie altogether. Like most parents, me and her mom are extremely proud of her.
We also put a lot of effort into raising her, and setting her up for success. Probably to a fault. There is almost nothing we wouldn’t do for her. As a duo, both mom and myself are the proverbial “helicopter parents,” very much in her business, making her our constant focus.
We know it, too, but it is hard to stop. The “off” switch is broken, it seems. Plus, we only have just the one child, so there are no siblings with which to spread out our attention.
One of the most outrageous things I have ever done on her behalf was to make an app to help her learn her times tables. What I mean is just what it sounds like: I made a brand new mobile application, from scratch, with the goal of having one user: Penelope.
Who does that?
I am a mobile developer by trade, so I had the skills to do it. After perusing what was on offer at Google Play, and not liking the stuff I saw, especially stuff with ads in them, or apps with too many flashing lights or ones that seemed too light on the actual math, I figured “what the heck,” I will roll-my-own.
Presto! About 20 hours later I had version 1.0 of a bare bones app that my daughter could use to learn her times tables.
It had no graphics, and little incentives, but it did save her results, so she could try and beat her high scores. Which she did, over and over.
Within a week she had mastered everything up to 12. So I thought, again “what the heck,” and I added 13s, too. Which I admit is a little crazy. Who learns their 13s? But, it was very little work to add them on to the base app, so I did it. She got good at those, too.
Yup, I built an app for one user and it paid off, big time!
Furthermore, making this little math app planted a seed in me.
I realized saving high scores made my little app challenging, and this small feature made a simple app into a sort of game. Trying to beat your high score was slightly addictive. But, in a good way!
Imagine how much better things could be if I built around this basic “game,” and added better graphics, with more of a theme to the whole thing, and offered actual in-game rewards, and not just high scores.
Heck, I might have something here, I thought. I could make the app exactly how I wanted, with no ads, and no compromising my vision, with the goal of making some very useful math skills— learning times tables — fun to master.
If I made the app much prettier, and much more engaging, Penelopes all over the world might use it. Maybe I would get some Thank You emails from moms and dads that had grade school kids that were helped, even a little, by my modest app? That would be amazing!
Have you ever played “Subway Surfers”? It has over 1 billion downloads, and it is really well done. But, the game part of “Subway Surfers” is the “small part.” The “big part” is collecting rewards: new characters; different outfits for your characters; different surfboards with unique styles, and much, much more. The collecting part of the app is what makes it so… engaging.
So that is what I am doing. Actually, that is what we are doing. I focus on the code, and chasing down graphics, while my own Penelope does some beta testing, and gives me feedback, and makes quirky suggestions that only a kid can think up.
There are many hidden things in the game, little Easter eggs to be found, and surreal events that happen. The app has sort of an “Alice in Wonderland” feel to it. For instance, there is a “Giant Cat” mode where one of your rewards — a cat named “Chubbs” — suddenly becomes as big as a house!
The game is part me, part her, and wholly unique. The best thing about making it is: we get to spend quality time together, making something fun and creative, that is our own.
When it is ready for sale, I sure hope it does well. Money is always nice. But getting those Thank You emails would be amazing, too!
But, even if our app isn’t a huge, conventional success, doing this project together has really bonded us as father and daughter.
Let’s face it, you can’t put a price on that. Plus, now my kid knows her times tables. All the way up to 13!
Thanks for your interest! 🚀
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