Rookaby Teaches Toddlers Chess

Discover the first chess moves together, before your child can read. Meet six pieces who explain their own moves. Follow a helpful first step, trace the movement with your hand, then walk the same piece together on the screen. Rookaby reads the instructions aloud while you practise together. 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. Rookaby speaks 42 languages; choose one in Settings. 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. Move your rook, watch its friend take a turn, and help both reach their stars. - The board. Set up the board: every piece has its own glowing home square, and the round ends when all of them stand at home. The youngest place three pieces and are done. 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. In Walk together, your child chooses a piece, hears how it walks, and takes turns with its friend from the other house until both have had their walk. No chess set needed. 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. SHORT, SHARED 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 every story, every game, Walk together and all the puzzles in one purchase. Bought part of Rookaby before? You only pay for what is missing, and every purchase stays valid. No subscription.