How Mai Actually Works: A Walkthrough for Homeschool Parents
If you have three minutes, the video below is the fastest way to understand Mai. Scott walks you through it on screen.
If you'd rather read, this post covers the same ground. We'll start with what Mai actually is, because that shapes everything about how you use it.
What is Mai, in one paragraph?
Mai is a learning companion your child talks to out loud, inside a system you control. She builds lessons around what your child is actually interested in, has a real back-and-forth conversation with them about it, and then tells you what happened. She is not a curriculum you buy and follow. She is not a tablet you hand over and walk away from. You set the boundaries, you approve the direction, and you see every conversation afterwards.
Who is Mai for?
Families teaching at home who want a rhythm that survives a real week.
We built Mai for the parent who has three good curriculum options open in three browser tabs and no idea which one fits their kid. For the family where one child will read for four hours and the other one will not sit still for twenty minutes. For unschoolers who want their child's rabbit holes to go somewhere. For Charlotte Mason families who want narration to be a conversation and not a chore. For anyone who has hit the Sunday-night blank page.
Most homeschool burnout doesn't come from a shortage of material. There is more free material online than any family could use in a decade. It comes from not having a system that holds up when someone gets sick, or the week falls apart, or your child suddenly only wants to talk about volcanoes.
What is Mai not?
This matters more than the feature list, so we'll be direct about it.
Mai does not teach your child unsupervised. She does not decide what your family studies. She does not diagnose learning differences, replace a professional, or make legal decisions about your homeschool. And she never runs without you being able to see exactly what was said.
You stay the teacher. Mai does the planning, the patience, and the twentieth explanation of the same idea.
How do you set up your family?
Setup takes about ten minutes, and you only do it once.
You start by choosing your role - parent, guide, or student - because Mai behaves differently for each. As a parent you'll add your details, verify you're an adult, and set a PIN. That PIN keeps the parent side of the app parent-only. Your child can use Mai freely without being able to change any of your settings.
Then you build a profile for each child: their age, and what they're into right now. Be honest and be specific here. "Minecraft, sharks, and drawing" gives Mai far more to work with than "science." This is the part that makes lessons feel like they were written for your kid, because they were.
If you have more than one child, each gets their own profile, their own interests, and their own pace. Mai keeps them separate.
How do you set the boundaries you want?
How do you make your child's first lesson?
Tell Mai what you want, in plain words.
You can ask for something specific - "fractions, but using her Lego" - or hand Mai an interest and let her build around it. She writes the lesson, finds a video or a picture to go with it, and shows you a preview before your child sees anything.
The lesson overview tells you what you need to set up first, and how long it takes. If a lesson needs red cabbage steeped or water frozen the night before, it says so on the overview, not halfway through. Lessons that need nothing say nothing.
You can print any lesson in full colour, picture and all, with at-home swaps for any supply you don't have. Several parents have told us those end up on the fridge.
What actually happens when your child talks to Mai?
They talk, and she talks back, out loud and in real time.
There's no typing and no waiting. Your child can interrupt her, ask her to slow down, or go off on a tangent. They can also show her things: snap a photo of a worksheet, or pick a PDF, and she'll look at it with them and talk it through.
Mai is built to nudge rather than hand over answers. When your child gets something right, she tells them why it's right. At the end of a lesson she runs a recap as a conversation, not a quiz. She talks the last questions through with them, and drops a surprising fact after each one.
What do you see afterwards?
Everything.
When your child finishes a lesson, you get a notification with their name and what they worked on. Tap it and you land on the summary.
From your dashboard you can read every session: a short recap, or the full transcript if you want the whole back-and-forth. That's where the real value tends to show up. You find out your eight-year-old has strong opinions about the water cycle, or that the thing you thought they understood, they don't quite.
What else is in there?
A few things that aren't lessons.
Story time. Your child can turn a lesson into a story adventure and choose where it goes. You can run it yourself instead of Mai - pick parent-led and she writes you the whole thing: the scenes, the voices, where to pause, what to ask afterwards.
Play Box. Family game night with more than one child. Mai respects every child's guardrails and talks to each of them in the style you chose for them.
Community Hub. Lessons other families have made. Share one of yours with a link and it opens straight to the lesson.
Where should you start?
Set up one child, pick one thing they already love, and build a single lesson around it. Sit next to them for that first conversation. That fifteen minutes will tell you more than any feature list, including this one.
Frequently Asked Questions
That's your call. Plenty of parents sit in for the first few sessions and then step back once they've seen how it goes. Either way, you set the guardrails beforehand and you can read the full transcript of every conversation afterwards. Nothing happens out of your sight.
About ten minutes for your first child, and a couple of minutes for each one after that. The longest part is thinking about what your child is genuinely interested in, and that's the part worth taking your time over, because it's what makes the lessons land.
Yes. Mai builds around your child's interests and your direction rather than a fixed scope and sequence, so it fits unschooling and delight-directed families as comfortably as it fits a structured plan. You decide what gets studied; Mai turns it into something doable.
Each child gets their own profile, their own interests, their own guardrails, and their own pace. Mai keeps them separate, and in group sessions like Play Box she speaks to each child in the style you chose for them.
Yes, the full transcript of every session, not just a summary. You'll also get an alert if your child says something concerning, including any specific words or names you've asked Mai to watch for.
