Lessons — teaching your child at their level

Updated July 29, 2026

Most learning apps decide what to teach from your child's age or school year. Lessons doesn't. You give Peko a topic and what you'd like your child to get to, and Peko finds out where they actually are by asking them — then teaches from there.

That means two children of the same age with the same lesson plan can get completely different sessions, and a child who is ahead in one subject and behind in another is met correctly in both.

Setting up a lesson plan

Open the Peko Pal app, tap your child on Home, then tap their Pal.
Under Lessons, choose Add a Topic.
Fill in two things:
- Topic — what you want them taught. Your own words: "Multiplication," "Why the seasons happen," "Spelling tricky words."
- Goal — what "done" looks like. "Know their times tables up to 12."

That's the whole setup — there's nothing to install on the device. There's no grade level to pick and no lessons to choose from — deciding what your child is ready for is Peko's job, not yours.

You can add more than one topic, and your child picks. Lessons has its own place on the device, next to Apps and Friends. Your child steers over to it, hears each topic announced as they browse, and presses the button on the one they want. If they have no active topics, Lessons simply doesn't appear on the device at all.

What the first session is like

The first time your child opens Lessons on a topic, Peko doesn't teach anything. It asks three short questions, easy to harder, and asks your child to explain their thinking out loud rather than just give answers. It's framed as a friendly warm-up — Peko never calls it a test.

From those answers it works out where your child is, and starts teaching one step above what they showed. Every session after that picks up where the last one ended, so your child isn't re-taught things they've already got.

How Peko teaches

It doesn't give answers. When your child is stuck, Peko narrows the question or breaks it into a smaller one. If they're still stuck after a couple of hints, it works the first step out loud and hands it back to them.

It names the strategy. When your child gets something, Peko says how they got it — "you counted up from a number you already knew, that works every time" — because the method is the part worth keeping.

Wrong answers are useful. Peko treats a wrong answer as information it asked for. It looks for the rule your child is applying, which is usually a sensible rule used in the wrong place, and fixes the rule rather than just the answer.

Your child has to explain. Peko doesn't ask yes/no questions, doesn't offer choices to pick from, and won't settle for a bare number. If your child just says the answer, Peko asks how they got it. A child who can't explain it doesn't have it yet, however right the answer was — and this way, guessing can't look like understanding.

Reading your child's progress

Open a topic under Lessons on your child's Pal to see:

Where they are — beginner, developing, proficient or advanced, in one sentence describing what they can actually do now.
Progress toward your goal — a percentage, based on what your child has demonstrated rather than on lessons completed.
Skills — what's mastered, what's shaky, what's still being learned.
Sticking points — wrong rules Peko has noticed your child applying. These are what it works on directly.
What's next — where the next session will pick up.
Sessions — each one with a summary, and the actual questions Peko asked.

Before the first session, a plan says so plainly — "Peko will find their level in the first session" — rather than showing you a zero. Nothing here is guessed from your child's age.

The questions Peko asked

Open a session and choose Show questions to see each check Peko made: the question, your child's answer in their own words, and why Peko judged it the way it did.

You'll notice there's no right/wrong mark. Peko judges the explanation, so a right answer with nothing behind it counts as partly there, and good reasoning that slipped on the arithmetic counts as explained it.

Questions are made up in the moment, aimed at what your child just did. There's no fixed set of questions anywhere — your child won't get the same quiz twice.

When Peko's own work is questioned

Peko asks the questions and marks the answers, which is a lot to take on trust. So every check is examined independently afterwards:

What your child said is compared against the recording of the conversation, so Peko can't quote your child saying something they didn't say.
A second, different AI re-judges the answer without being told what Peko decided, and also checks whether the question itself was sound.

If either check disagrees, you'll see an orange warning on that question explaining what didn't line up — for example, "Peko's quote doesn't match the recording of what your child said," or "A second check disagreed with how Peko scored this." The plan also shows a count so you can spot a pattern without opening every session.

These warnings don't change your child's progress. They're shown to you because you're better placed to judge than we are. If you see the same kind of warning again and again on one topic, treat that plan's progress with suspicion and let us know.

Pausing, editing and removing topics

Open a topic and tap the settings icon (top right) to:

Edit it — change the topic or goal at any time.
Pause it — it comes off the device, and your child's progress is kept. You can still open it in the app and read everything.
Mark it completed — same as pausing, but recorded as finished.
Delete it — permanently removes the topic and its whole history: every session, every question, every answer. The app warns you first and offers pausing as the safe alternative, because a deleted history cannot be brought back.

Past topics stay under Past Topics, clearly separated from active ones, so what your child worked on last year is still there to look back through.

Good to know

Lessons needs WiFi. Teaching happens through a live conversation with an AI service, so the device has to be online. It won't work offline.

Your child's voice is streamed while they're holding the button, the same as any other talking feature on the Peko Pal. See Reading your child's conversations with Peko for exactly what's saved and for how long — lesson conversations are transcribed like any other, and session records are kept for 90 days.

Progress is only written when the device can reach the internet. If the connection drops mid-session, Peko still teaches, but that session's progress may not be recorded. Nothing your child learned is lost — the next session simply re-checks where they are.

Troubleshooting

My child can't find Lessons on the device

Lessons only appears when there's at least one active topic for them. Add a topic, or un-pause an existing one, and it shows up next to Apps and Friends on the next config refresh.

My child opened a topic and Peko just chatted normally

That happens when the topic was paused or deleted after the device last checked in. Peko would rather have a friendly conversation than tell a child something is broken. The next refresh removes the stale topic from the device.

The progress hasn't changed after a session

Progress moves on evidence, not on time spent. A session where your child mostly consolidated something they already knew may not move the percentage much.

If nothing at all appeared, check the device was online during the session.

Peko is teaching too easy / too hard

Peko adjusts from what your child shows it, so this usually corrects itself within a session or two. You can also make the goal more specific — "Know their times tables up to 12 without counting on fingers" tells Peko more than "Get better at maths."

If it stays wrong, check the sessions view: if the questions look like they're aimed at the wrong level, and especially if you see dispute warnings, that's worth reporting.

Can my child see their own progress?

No. Progress, levels and session records are only visible in the Peko Pal app. Your child hears their progress from Peko in conversation — it tells them what they got better at, at the end of each session.