Spelling & phonics
Your child hears a word, sounds it out, and builds it from letter tiles, out loud and at their own pace. It is real phonics practice for young children, from the very first letters to confident, whole-word spelling. No worksheets. No pressure. No reading required to begin.
Spelling starts with sound. In Spell Buddy, your child asks for a word out loud, hears it spoken in a warm, patient voice, then builds it letter by letter. Each tile they tap says its own sound, so the link between what they hear and what they write is made every single time. It is the way spelling is meant to click into place, through the ear first and the hand second.
There is nothing to read to get going, so a three-year-old who cannot yet read a sentence can still start spelling today. The whole thing runs on speech, colour and big, forgiving taps, so a wrong move is never a dead end, just another go.
Strong spellers are not built by memorising lists. They are built by hearing a word, breaking it into sounds, and matching each sound to its letters. That is synthetic phonics, the approach used in classrooms, and it is the engine under everything here. Your child practises it without ever being told they are practising it.
Because the sounds are spoken and never written underneath the letter, a pre-reader is never asked to decode a phonetic label they cannot read yet. They simply hear the sound and find the letter. Simple for them, and exactly right for how spelling develops.
When your child is ready for more, Spelling Missions turn practice into a gentle climb. Fifty levels rise from the simplest sound-out words up to trickier spellings, each one wrapped in a tiny story so it feels like an adventure rather than a test. Stars mark the path, and progress is saved, so a child always knows where they are and what is next.
Every level is built to be winnable. The aim is a child who leaves feeling capable, not corrected.
We do not invent the rungs of the ladder. The spelling progression is mapped to the Australian Curriculum, the single national standard set by the same independent authority that runs the country's literacy and numeracy checks. That gives us a public, well-tested map of what a child meets at each stage, so practice here lines up with school instead of drifting off on its own. The sources are all on How it helps.
What age is it for? From age 3 and up, with no upper limit. The youngest tap letters for their sounds; older children build whole words and climb the missions.
Does my child need to read already? No. Everything is spoken, so a pre-reader can start straight away.
Is it really free? Yes, there is a free tier forever, with no ads and nothing sold. Paid plans add more words, family voices and printable practice. See pricing.
Does it work on iPad? Yes. It is touch-first with big tap targets and needs no keyboard.
See exactly how your child spells out loud, with no signup, on the live demo. When you are ready, the free tier is yours forever.