Word Spell ABC phonics Gwimpy 4+

This application is a 'one-stop' preschool literacy program for writing, recognising and constructing words phonically.

The first section of this application helps your child recognise and recall the letters of the alphabet. Each letter is accompanied by the correct phonic sound and an illustration of an object which includes this letter. They also get the opportunity to trace each letter in lowercase, using either a finger or a stylus pen, captured, and a picture of the shapes displayed as a summary. I hope your children enjoy this section as much as my grandchildren do!

In the next section, the young learner sees a picture of a familiar object or animal and speaks to confirm the name. The child can then select the letters indicated at the centre of the screen; the letters are spoken in synthetic phonics to aid with spelling the word. When the child has picked the correct letter in the proper position, they can choose subsequent letters until they have finished spelling the whole word.

The words get more complex, and the app includes the whole synthetic alphabet, which provides for sh, ch, th, ck, ng, ee, oa, ow, oo, ie, air, ue, oi, ar, or.

All this with fantastic illustrations and great phonic sounds to help your child get a head start before they start school.


Have you ever had a surge of anxiety about your child facing the paraphernalia of phonics? Relax; you do not need a linguistics degree to get to the first stage. In fact, with a brief introduction of the basics, your child will soon be having creative fun with words, as any child should.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound, and your child will be taught about these as part of their phonics learning. There are forty-five phonemes! Yes, a few more than twenty-six letters of the alphabet.

Phonemes by Gwimpy will introduce your child to these sounds with the assistance of a little helper who is also grappling to master them. The phoneme is pressed on the menu, and the sound is reproduced with this sound being included in a word which is then reinforced by a short morphing of the phoneme into an object representing the word. That is it!

The test randomly selects a phoneme at the end so your child can identify the sound with the written phoneme.

We hope you enjoy the learning and look forward to other journeys with Gwimpy.