Read this once, then just play
You are the instrument
Phonological awareness is a listening skill, so it grows through live back-and-forth, not apps. This page is your pocket coach: it hands you the script, the word lists, and a tracker, and you supply the voice. Every round is also a conversational turn, which is the interaction research keeps pointing to as the active ingredient in early language growth.
Climb in order
The ladder runs from big sounds to small ones: rhymes, then syllables, then first sounds, then single sounds. The order is not a style choice. A child who cannot yet hear rhymes will only be frustrated by sound-blending drills, so resist the urge to skip ahead.
Start where the child is
Around age three, live in Stage 1 and dabble in Stage 2 name clapping. The checkpoints under each stage tell you when to lean upward. Repetition is the win condition here: the same five games played often beat thirty games played once.
🌍 Two languages, one ladder
Sound awareness is not tied to English. The skill transfers across languages, so a syllable clapped in Amharic counts exactly as much as one clapped in English. Fidel makes this vivid: each character is a consonant plus a vowel, one clean beat, so fidel practice and the syllable games reinforce each other. Play any game here in whichever language fits the moment.
Quick draw
Tell it where you are, and it deals you one game.
Four stages, thirty games
Each stage has a short why, a set of watch-for checkpoints, and its games. Tap anything to open it. Tap "We played it" after a round and a star appears at three plays.
The word cupboard
Grab-and-go word lists for any of the games above.