Every child develops at their own pace, and there's no single "correct" age to start structured lessons at home. That said, there are a few fairly reliable signals that tell you your child is ready to sit through something more focused than free play, without it feeling forced.
Once a child starts asking why the sky is blue or why the cat meows instead of barks, they've moved past pure sensory play and into genuine curiosity about how things work. That curiosity is exactly what structured learning can feed, as long as the answers come in small, simple pieces.
You don't need your child to sit still for thirty minutes. But if they can watch a 3-4 minute video or listen to a short story without wandering off entirely, they can handle a short lesson of similar length.
If your child points at a shop sign and says "that's an A" or counts stairs as they climb them, they're already building the foundation lessons are meant to formalize. At that point, structured content just gives shape to something they're already doing instinctively.
Kids who like echoing new words back, even if they mispronounce them, are showing the exact behavior that voice-based learning apps are built around. That back-and-forth is how vocabulary actually sticks at this age.
Some children start looking for a bit more direction as the day goes on — not because free play stops being fun, but because they've had enough of it and want something with a clearer beginning and end. A short, complete lesson satisfies that in a way that open-ended play doesn't.
That's completely fine too. There's no harm in waiting a few more months and revisiting it. Forcing lessons on a child who isn't ready usually backfires — they associate learning with frustration instead of curiosity, which makes the actual starting point harder later.
The goal at this age isn't to race ahead of a curriculum. It's to keep learning feeling like something your child wants to do, so that by the time school gets more demanding, they already enjoy it.