Responsive people before passive viewing
What a baby is already noticing deserves a real person who names it, pauses, waits, and responds. A screen is not a substitute for a relationship.
See evidenceOpen-source family learning · 6 months–3 years
Read a small prompt, put the screen down, and play for a while. Sprout pairs slow parent guidance with printable cards and ordinary moments at home.
Ratio from the built-in lesson “Beep Beep, Let’s Go”: 2 min Screen / 10 min Outside。
Put the direction on the table
Each packet is small: open it, read it, then carry the idea back to objects, sounds, and relationships at home.
What a baby is already noticing deserves a real person who names it, pauses, waits, and responds. A screen is not a substitute for a relationship.
See evidenceThis stage is for parent guidance: read it, put the device down, and use printed cards, books, and real objects. Co-viewing is off by default at 18–23 months; 24–36 months can also stay screen-free.
See evidenceNotice what the child is attending to, name it, pause, and respond to a look, gesture, movement, or sound. Then return the idea to daily life.
See evidenceBilingualism is not a race. Each language needs real, sufficient, natural input; unfamiliar English or recorded audio cannot replace rich conversation.
See evidenceTouch one, say one, then name the total. Put things in, take them out, sort, and arrange. No flashcards and no correctness score.
See evidenceThe built-in pack includes 96 lessons, 6 stages, 17 activities, and 254 word entries.
The marks on the doorframe
Like pencil marks on a doorframe, age is a gentle reference point. Move the paper tag and see what can be brought back into real life.
6–8 Months: Gentle Face-to-Face Play
The grown-up reads the guide; no child-side lesson is shown. Then use cards, books, and real objects together.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Look and play with printed cards, familiar faces, and a floor mat. No rapid card changes, shape tests, or forced tummy-time sessions.
Share real family photos, facial features, and gentle songs. Use the people and names familiar to your family, without expecting words or a consistent response to baby's name.
Hide a little and discover together. Briefly cover the caregiver's face, partly hide a large toy, and share a safe mirror. Looking without searching or smiling is welcome.
Take turns talking and singing with printed animal cards and a caregiver's voice. Repeat familiar short songs and use screen-free humming in a gentle bedtime routine.
Move slowly, then pause.
Read the short parent guide, then put the screen down and try it with a real object.
“Look at this card.”
“It moves slowly.”
9–11 months: Discover cause and effect through back-and-forth play
The grown-up reads the guide; no child-side lesson is shown. Then return to real objects and face-to-face play.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Use bubbles, boxes, and cups to explore appearing, disappearing, in, and out.
Practice imitation, gestures, and waiting through face-to-face play and songs.
Hear food names, more, all gone, and simple number talk during safe meals.
Follow your baby's attention and connect home objects, cards, and songs to daily life.
Watch bubbles appear, float, and pop while taking turns responding.
Read the short parent guide, then put the screen down and try it with a real object.
“Bubbles!”
“More?”
Listen, look, point, and talk in everyday life
The grown-up reads the guide; no child-side lesson is shown. Then return to real life and outdoor noticing.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Use animal cards and short stories for names, sounds, and turn-taking.
Name body parts during care and songs while respecting body boundaries.
Notice vehicles safely and explore rolling and speed with a toy.
Talk about one, many, one, and two with visible everyday objects.
Connect clothing words with going out and hand-washing routines.
Hear nature words and move slowly during safe walks and weather noticing.
Notice real vehicles safely and name them slowly.
Read this first. An adult chooses a safe place to notice vehicles. Name one vehicle at a time. When none are nearby, use the large printed cards. There is no need to go to a road or water.
“This is a car, beep beep.”
“The bus is going by.”
“Did you hear it?”
“We stay in a safe place.”
Listen, point, and talk while growing at your own pace
Co-viewing is off by default. If enabled, keep it short and stay with the child; parent guidance alone is always fine.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Hear red, yellow, and blue with clothes, printed cards, and scribbles.
Find round edges, match shapes, and build a low tower.
Count one to three visible objects, then say how many.
Hear feeling words and experience support and asking for help.
Children join care routines while grown-ups handle hygiene and safety.
Compare matching objects, nest cups, and gently reach.
Find something red, then sort a few socks.
Read the short parent guide, then put the screen down and try it with a real object.
“Red, right here.”
“This sock is red too.”
Sort, count, and find together, then play offline
Short co-viewing is optional and always with a grown-up. A fully offline path is fine too.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Notice colors and kinds, and group similar things.
Touch one as you say one number and explore small groups.
Notice animal features and read about a panda eating, climbing, and resting.
Listen to each other's feelings and practice brief turns.
Find the cat's position and explore up and down through movement.
Notice the weather outside and choose what to take along.
Look at the main color and sort red and blue.
Read the short parent guide, then put the screen down and try it with a real object.
“The apple is mostly red.”
“The bowl is mostly blue.”
Explore with support and grow with reassurance
Short co-viewing is optional and always with a grown-up. A fully offline path is fine too.
The full ring is 12 waking hours; screen time uses its real proportion and the remaining life segments are illustrative.
Start with alternating pairs, then explore groups of three together.
Adults model larger sets while children explore small sets hands-on.
Break familiar routines into small steps, with room to try and ask for help.
Explore preschool routines, goodbyes, requests for help, and kind words.
Explore food variety, safe movement, and screen-free bedtime routines.
Observe specific plants and local weather rather than treating pictures as universal rules.
Notice how two things take turns in a pattern.
Read the short parent guide, then put the screen down and try it with a real object.
“Apple, banana. Here is the pair again.”
“What do you notice?”
One lesson, mostly outside the screen
This parent-guidance lesson starts with a prompt on screen. The real lesson is noticing vehicles from a safe place, looking at cards at home, and leaving room for a response.
Read this first. An adult chooses a safe place to notice vehicles. Name one vehicle at a time. When none are nearby, use the large printed cards. There is no need to go to a road or water.
Stay with the child. Keep away from roads, rails, wheels, doors, and water. Do not use loud recorded vehicle sounds. Close windows and keep away from windowsills and furniture.
Look at one card at home. The adult names it and makes a soft sound.
From a safe place, notice two vehicles and name each one.
?What sound did you hear?
Activity plugins
One activity does one thing: present it slowly inside a 16:9 stage, then hand it back to a grown-up and child. Third-party activities use a namespaced type.
Slow black, white, and red shapes
Look at one real word at a time
Hide a little, then find it together
Pop a finite set and see what is inside
Touch one, say one, name the total
Briefly notice a small quantity
Point to one large target
Group things by one feature
Lay out a familiar routine
Notice two or three things repeating
Read one page and leave room to talk
Learn it for the grown-up, then sing offline
Put a word into a body movement
Slow down together, with no finish line
Short, grounded, and never auto-playing
One task in an isolated external page
Read as an adult, then do the real activity
Types are namespaced, such as example.hello-stars; the host owns focus, timing, the parent gate, and resources.
Run it at home
The living-room screen does not need to know the wider internet. A Mac, NAS, or small computer serves the player on the home network; a phone opens the parent area only when needed.
The server listens on 4310 by default. The TV, iPad, and parent area use the same family network.
The server stores family data in local SQLite; offline records stay on the current device.
The player requests a six-digit pairing code that is valid for 10 minutes; the device token is not printed on the page.
The player ships with the sprout.core content pack, so a family can try offline before connecting a home server.
Try it · The television is off
Open the television to try a quiet browser demo. Data stays in this browser; there are no pre-recorded voices, so speech uses the browser.
Time to turn the screen off and play with real things 🌱
This is a small browser demo and does not connect to a family server.
Every tradeoff has a source
These sources appear in the evidence review's reference list. Each sentence is a product shorthand, not a replacement for the study.
What it changed:Keep screens last in the priority order: under two, protect reading, stories, and shared play.
Read originalWhat it changed:Make under-18-month content an adult tool; if media is introduced, keep it high-quality and shared.
Read originalWhat it changed:Leave screen time empty for the first two years, with boundaries around meals, bedrooms, and session length.
Read originalWhat it changed:Center responsive care and early learning opportunities instead of treating a screen as a playmate.
Read originalWhat it changed:Use the stricter 0–3 default as the starting point, with outdoor time and less parental phone use around children.
Read originalWhat it changed:Use video as a prompt, not an answer, and leave younger children room to transfer back to real life.
Read originalWhat it changed:Put the parent response at the center of co-viewing: pause, notice, then continue.
Read originalWhat it changed:Connect every lesson to real conversation so screens do not crowd out adult words and conversational turns.
Read originalWhat it changed:Use child-directed speech and more conversational turns as the real language input.
Read originalWhat it changed:Attach each screen prompt to guided play with a goal, support, and child participation.
Read originalWhat it changed:Make interaction active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive.
Read originalWhat it changed:Use a natural stopping point so leaving the screen is easier than being pulled into another episode.
Read originalWhat it changed:Reject retention tricks, rewards, and exit barriers; leaving should be as easy as entering.
Read originalFor developers
If you want to maintain content or extend an activity, this is the short map of boundaries, startup steps, and minimal examples.
apps/
server/ Fastify + SQLite
admin/ Parent area · React + Ant Design
player/ TV / iPad player
packages/
schema/ Zod data contracts
core/ scheduler + screen policy
plugin-sdk/ activity contract + tokens
activities/ 17 built-in activities
content/packs/ sprout-core
plugins/examples/ namespaced plugin examples
corepack enable
export pnpm_config_verify_deps_before_run=false
pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm start
content/examples/hello-pack/
pack.json
lexicon.json
assets/
routes/hello-route.json
lessons/hello.s1.shapes.json
pnpm content:typecheck
pnpm content:validate --pack content/examples/hello-pack --strict
{
"id": "example.hello",
"entry": "index.js",
"activities": [{
"type": "example.hello-stars"
}]
}
// mount(el, ctx) -> ActivityInstance
// Clean DOM, events, timers, and sound
The Android TV package and content pack are both on the Release page.
Site code is MIT; course content is free for personal, family, and non-commercial educational use, with written author permission required for commercial use. Fluent Emoji is MIT, Lucide is ISC, and the local fonts are OFL-1.1.
Fonts: LXGW WenKai, Fraunces, and Nunito, all shipped as local subsets.
Questions
It is not designed to extend viewing. Ages 6–17 months get adult guidance only; co-viewing is off by default at 18–23 months; ages 24–36 months can also stay fully offline. Every lesson has a natural ending and an offline next step.
The core pack starts at 6 months and has no child-side playback path for younger babies. Face-to-face response, floor play, singing, books, and professional child-health guidance come first.
When connected to a server, family data lives in local SQLite on the device running @sprout/server. Offline records stay on the current device.
The public repository does not ship macOS system voices because their license does not allow public redistribution. Without pre-recorded audio, the page uses the browser Web Speech API; a product build can use local or licensed TTS.
Code is MIT. Course content is for personal, family, and non-commercial use under the repository's CC BY-NC 4.0 terms; commercial use requires written author permission. Third-party assets keep their own licenses.
No. Sprout is not a medical device, treatment tool, or developmental diagnostic. Milestones are for everyday observation and conversations with professionals. Consult a pediatric or child-health professional when concerns persist or skills regress.