Every app Arihant Sethia tried for his daughter had the same problem: the animation became the point, not the learning.
The idea behind TinyTraces came from a simple frustration. Arihant Sethia wanted to help his daughter practice writing - letters, numbers, shapes - but paper worksheets were not always at hand. The App Store had options, but they all leaned the same direction: animations, sounds, reward systems that pulled a child's attention away from the actual skill being built. He looked for something that balanced calm focus with real progress tracking and did not find it, so he built it.
TinyTraces is a handwriting practice app for kids aged 3 through pre-K, optimized for Apple Pencil on iPad. Children trace letters, numbers, and shapes in a distraction-free environment. There are no ads, no tracking, and no third-party data collection - a deliberate choice that reflects how Arihant thought about the product from the start.
Child Independence and Parent Visibility
One of the design decisions that sets TinyTraces apart is where it draws the line between what a child controls and what a parent controls. A child can change colors on their own - the same way they would pick up a different crayon - without needing a parent to unlock or approve every interaction. That independence is intentional. At the same time, parents get a progress view that shows how a child's movements are developing over time: whether grip and control are improving, where letters are still shaky, which shapes need more practice.
That combination - a calm, focused experience for the child and meaningful visibility for the parent - is the gap TinyTraces was built to fill. Most apps in the space either over-gamify the child side or ignore the parent side entirely. Neither produces the kind of focused skill-building that Arihant Sethia was looking for when he started searching.
The primary audience is parents of children around age 3 through pre-K: kids who can sustain short practice sessions and are beginning to develop early handwriting control. TinyTraces is built for parents who want their children to build a real skill, not just pass time with a screen.
TinyTraces is available on the App Store.
