Lickety Split: Visual Timer

Lickety Split is a visual and musical timer for kids that turns everyday routines into a game. Each task has its own classical music, which plays for as long as the task should take and speeds up as time runs out, while an animated character acts out the task and a Time Disc drains.

WHY IT WORKS

"We need to leave in five minutes." That rarely works with a young child: research shows the prefrontal cortex, which handles focus, self-regulation and executive function, is among the last parts of the brain to mature. Music is a way in. A child follows a song long before they can read a clock, so Lickety Split puts the time left into the music. Five minutes becomes something a child can see and hear, and grown-ups get to cheer instead of nag.

TWO KINDS OF TIMER

Beat the Timer: finish before the music runs out.

- Ready to leave the house (5 minutes)

- Getting dressed

- PJs on

- Getting ready for a meal

- Cleaning up the room

- Making the bed

Count Down: keep going until the music ends.

- Brushing teeth (a full two minutes)

- Taking turns

- Reading time

- Study time

Anything Timer: a song of about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 or 20 minutes for anything else.

Your Song, Your Length: time any task with a song from your own music. Its length becomes the timer.

MAKE IT YOUR FAMILY'S

- Your own tasks: "Shoes on" or "Feed the cat", in your words, with a picture, of the length you choose

- Your own prompts: record what the timer says before the song, in your voice

- Your own songs: give any task a song of yours, or one of the app's 15 recordings

- Routines: put tasks in order for the morning or bedtime. A Now and Next card shows what is happening now and what comes next, in the tasks' pictures, like a picture schedule

- Children & profiles: up to six children on one device, each with their own character, routines and progress. No accounts

MY DAY

The win is the child’s own: they beat the music and tap “I Did It!” themselves. Today, a calendar and a Storybook bring routines and plans together. Plan school mornings, change a single day, and look back together in the evening. A family can choose something to try, like patience, and keep a few words, a drawing or a short voice story. Trying counts, on hard days too, with no points or streaks to keep up.

CHARACTERS

Timey the hourglass is free, with 25 rewards. Premium adds a train, a unicorn, a bee, a caterpillar and the dinosaurs, each with short animated stories for both timers, and Music Practice with Beaty: play, sing or clap, and Beaty listens and dances along (needs a microphone; nothing is recorded). Premium is an optional subscription, $2.99 a year in the US, behind a grown-up question.

MADE FOR SMALL HANDS

- A narrator says each task out loud, so a child who can't read yet can use it

- Tap the timer to pause, resume, start over or go home

- Settings hide the Time Disc or the numbers, skip the story intro or voice prompts, and choose what happens when the duck wins

- Changing a timer, opening a link or buying anything asks a grown-up question first

- Works with TalkBack, and with your device's reduced-motion setting

- Works in landscape on tablets and foldables

WHO USES IT

Parents, for morning, bedtime and homework routines. Preschool teachers, for transitions and tidy-up time. Occupational therapists, for everyday skills. Visual timers are a familiar tool for children with autism or ADHD, and in small studies a visible timer lowered children's anxiety and inattention during timed tasks. Lickety Split is for all children.

Spoken prompts in 21 languages, from English and Spanish to Japanese, Hindi and Arabic.

No ads, no tracking and no accounts. Nothing your family makes is sent to us. Timers, music and characters work offline; the app goes online only to verify purchases and send crash reports.

Made by parents and educational technologists, helping families since 2011.