Mustard Seed Chinese

Diaspora Chinese families face a double struggle: kids whose Mandarin lags + a generational gap in faith transmission. Either one alone is hard; together, harder.

Existing products only solve one side, pure Chinese-learning apps (disconnected from faith) or pure Sunday school (with shallow Mandarin). Parents have to "stitch" the two worlds together by hand: Mandarin apps Monday through Friday, Sunday school on Sunday, never crossing.

Just as the mustard seed is small yet grows into a tree (Matthew 13:31-32), a child's daily knowledge, watered by God's word, takes root and grows. I believe fifteen minutes of Bible-Chinese a day beats one Sunday-school session a week, because the seed of faith needs daily watering.

• Kids 5–12 learning Mandarin, they already recognize a few dozen characters but need context and consistency.
• Diaspora Chinese families wanting their kids to grow in both language and faith, without the daily "stitching" between worlds.
• Sunday-school and Chinese-school teachers who want a supplemental tool with a Bible verse built into every lesson.
• Non-Chinese adults learning Mandarin who want to use familiar Bible texts as context anchors.
• Cross-cultural missionary families, kids in multilingual environments need a steady "first-language" Bible-learning baseline.

• Two tracks unified, every lesson progresses Mandarin and Bible knowledge at once. The core characters come from CUV verses.
• 9-step learning flow (Listen / See / Play / Match / Write / Read / Memorize) covers four learning channels: auditory, visual, motor, and memory.
• On-device speech recognition, Apple SFSpeechRecognizer runs entirely locally; children's voice data never leaves the phone.
• Offline-first, the Bible + all lessons ship in the bundle. Works on planes, in cars, with no signal.
• Multi-child family sharing, siblings each get their own profile, progress never mixes.
• No ads, no tracking, no third-party analytics, Apple Kids Category compliant.

Four learning modules:

• Garden · daily dashboard, verse feed, streak calendar, review reminders.
• Growth · progress tracking, lessons / characters / verses, all at a glance.
• Roots · Bible browser, all 66 books, pinyin overlay, notes, read-along, memorization.
• Path · learning route, structured curriculum with one Bible verse per lesson.

Five interactive exercises: Listen-and-Choose · Match · Stroke Writing · Read-Along · Memorization.

9-step lesson flow: Listen → See characters → Listen-and-Choose → Bubble Shooter → Match → Fishing Game → Stroke practice → Read-along → Memorize.

Native SwiftUI 17+ iOS, two games on SpriteKit physics (Bubble Shooter + Fishing Game), three UI languages (Simplified / Traditional / English).

• Mar 2026 · iOS 1.0 shipped on the App Store.
• App Store · apps.apple.com/.../id6760686942
• Level 0 · Pinyin live, starting from initials and finals.
• Level 1 · Characters live, covering the core common characters.
• Level 2 · Words live, moving into two-character and multi-character compounds.
• Combined character count across the three levels approaches 2,000, covering most everyday and core biblical vocabulary.
• Three UI languages (Simplified / Traditional / English) stable.
• Family sharing + multi-child profiles live.

• Android version in development, Kotlin + Jetpack Compose, sharing the same backend as iOS.
• Level 3 · Stories · Parables, planned, moving from characters and words into full biblical narratives and the parables of Jesus.
• Level 4 · Deep Roots · Theology, planned, into discipleship-tier content.
• Parent web dashboard, see your kid's progress, this week's verse, read-along pronunciation accuracy.
• Group features: church / Sunday-school class modes; teachers can assign lessons.