Sound It First: Phonics
Letter sounds for little kids
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
A letter appears. Race to call its sound before the picture grows. The earlier you call it, the more you score.
A bare letter appears on screen. Then, slowly, a picture of something that starts with that letter's sound grows in behind it: a becomes an apple, s becomes a snake, t becomes a tree.
Players race to call out the sound and the word. The earlier you call it, the more points you score. So children come to want to read the naked letter, and the picture arrives as the reward rather than the crutch.
SOUND FIRST, NOT LETTER NAMES
The score and the spoken reward are always the phoneme, "sss", never the letter name, "ess". That is the part that actually unlocks reading.
RACE ON ONE DEVICE
One to five players, each with a coloured buzzer along the edge of the screen. Pass the tablet round the table, or let a grown-up referee.
SPEED IS THE DIFFICULTY DIAL
Start on Slow, fifteen seconds, for an absolute beginner. Work up to Zoom, three seconds, once they are confident. Optional auto speed-up nudges them faster as they get it right.
MORE THAN LETTERS
Blends and digraphs, magic e, word families, sight words, and little books to read together. Plus numbers, counting, adding and times tables, and picture packs for animals, food, clothes, transport, weather and more.
BUILT FOR SMALL CHILDREN
Big targets. No menus to wander into mid-game, exit is press and hold. No ads. No links out. No sign-up, no account, no data collected.
WORKS OFFLINE
Every letter and picture is bundled inside the app, so it plays on a plane, in the car, and anywhere with no signal. No sign-up, no account, and no personal data is collected.
FROM CHALKBEE
Made by the team behind ChalkBee, free printable phonics, reading and maths worksheets for parents and primary teachers at chalkbee.com.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
A big Play button now sits at the bottom of the home screen, so you can start a round in one tap without scrolling past the topic list. It remembers the mode you played last.
Letter sounds are now spoken by the on-device voice, so the app works completely offline with no network requests at all.
Layout fixes on iPhone: the controls, the top player buzzer and the Next button no longer sit under the Dynamic Island or the home indicator, and the exit button can no longer be pushed off the edge of the screen mid-round.
The developer, Joshua Salway, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Joshua Salway
- Size
- 36.9 MB
- Category
- Education
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Made for Ages 0–5
- Copyright
- © 2026 Joshua Salway