Froggy Phonics Helps Kids Learn Letter Sounds While Having Fun

I was given a coupon code to give the Froggy Phonics app from Evanced Games a try. It’s recommended for kids from pre-K through second grade, and my six-year-old daughter had a lot of fun with it. She’s currently doing kindergarten and first grade work, and she already knows how to read.

While she had a lot of fun making the frog jump from lily pad to lily pad in search of the right word or froggy friends, she felt like it would be even more fun and educational for someone who isn’t a very strong reader yet since it focuses on letter sounds more than reading complete words.

The graphics are very cute and I enjoyed watching her play with it. At the lower right corner of the screen, you’re given a letter or two and a blank (in later levels, the blanks aren’t there). Sometimes you have to find a word that starts with the single letter given, sometimes there are two letters that make a special sound (like “th” or “ch”), and sometimes you have to hop from lily pad to lily pad in search of a word that ends with or contains a certain letter or letter combination instead.

When you find it and tap it, the frog jumps onto that lily pad, the word pops up, and you’re told what the word is. I love games like this where kids are learning letter sounds and words and don’t even realize it. It’s teaching not only single letter sounds, but letter combinations that don’t sound the way they seem like they should when taken one letter at a time.

The goal of the game is to collect stars for jumping on the correct words (five words earn one star, and you can collect three stars per level) and eventually get to the Firefly Festival. You can also find “froggy friends” along the way, which she thought was fun.

Not all of the levels were the same. They seemed to get a little harder each time, starting with single letters and blanks and ending with letter combinations within words with no blanks to let you know where in the word to expect to see them.

I think this is a great game for pre-K through at least first grade. Second graders may still enjoy it, but probably have enough reading experience not to need the repetition of the game. I could see advanced first and second graders getting bored with it quickly, but pre-K students, kindergarteners, and first graders who are just getting into reading should love it. It’s $4.99 on iTunes.

Photo credit: Froggy Phonics app screenshot, Evanced Games