Spellwick Workshop

What your child practices

Spellwick Workshop has 277 everyday words we picked for kids, each with its own short sentence. They are sorted into 12 streets, one for each family of spelling patterns:

• Silent e: cap and cape, kit and kite, hop and hope (Common Core RF.2.3c).
• Vowel teams: ai, ay and a_e for the long a sound; ee and ea; igh, y and i_e; oa, ow and o_e; oo, ew and u_e (RF.2.3b).
• Vowel sounds that glide: oi and oy, ou and ow, with the rule for which goes in the middle and which goes at the end (L.2.2d).
• Bossy r: ar, or, er, ir and ur (RF.3.3).
• After a short vowel: tch, dge and ck, next to ch, ge and k (L.2.2d).
• Adding -ing and -ed: double the last letter (hopping), drop the e (baking), change y to i (cried) or just add (jumping) (L.2.2, L.3.2e).
• Prefixes and suffixes: un-, re-, dis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ly and -ness, including happily and happiness (L.3.2, L.4.2).

We left out words that sound just like another common word, like tail and tale or road and rode, so a child is never marked wrong for a spelling that fits the sound.

How to play

Tap Make candles, pick a street in the village, and a round of five words begins. The device reads each word, then a sentence that uses it, then the word again, just like a spelling test at school. The Word and Sentence buttons read them again as often as your child likes. The sentence is also shown with a gap where the word goes.

Your child spells the word with wax blocks. A block can hold one letter or a whole pattern, so the real question is the one that matters: does this sound use ai, ay or a_e? The a_e block puts its silent e at the end of the word on its own, and a little line under the blocks shows what the word says so far. Tap Light it! to check.

A right word melts into a candle with the word written on it, the flame lights, and the candle joins the round. After five words, the candles fly out into the village. Each candle lights one window, and three candles light a whole house, where a neighbor opens the door to wave.

Four ways to spell a word

Mistakes that teach

When a word is spelled wrong, the game shows what your child made with the wrong part marked, and the right spelling with the right part glowing. A short rule goes with it, read aloud, like "ay usually comes at the end of a word, like in play" or "hop has a short vowel and ends in one consonant, so double the p before ing."

Then the answer hides and your child builds the word again. The right start of the word stays in place, so the retry is quick and focused on the part that needs fixing. The word comes back a few words later in the same round, and again on later days.

How it adapts

Each street keeps its own level. Four first-try rights in a row move it up a level, from picking a pattern to building whole words. Two misses in the last three move it back down, without any fuss. The first time your child plays, they choose Just starting or Ready for more.

Every word has a memory box. Words spelled right on the first try are spaced out more each time, and missed words come back soon. Each round also mixes in one word that is due for review from another street. When words are due, the Lamplighter button on the title screen makes a review round from them.

The village, candle shapes and colors

The village has 12 streets with 6 houses each, from Magic E Lane to Prefix Plaza. Lighting two houses on a street wakes up the next one. Each street has its own look: snow on Snowy Row, rain on Rainy Day Road, string lights on Magic E Lane and a fountain in Prefix Plaza.

Making candles unlocks 10 candle shapes, from tapers and stars to owls, mushrooms and crowns. Lighting houses unlocks 11 wax colors, up to rainbow and gold. The Candle shelf keeps every word your child has made, with a green dot on the ones they know by heart. Lighting every house on a street earns a sticker for the shared Sticker Book.

For grown-ups: the corner

Press and hold For grown-ups on the title screen. You will see how many words your child has practiced, first-try accuracy and level for each street, and the tricky words that were missed most, with the pattern in each one marked. You can turn on typing for every word, choose where new streets start, open every street, and choose whether words are read out loud as soon as they appear.

Tips for grown-ups

• Say a tricky word slowly together and tap a finger for each sound before your child builds it.
• Go on a pattern hunt: pick a pattern from the tricky words list, like igh, and find three words with it in a book or on signs.
• Sort words on paper into two columns, like ai words and ay words, and talk about where each pattern sits in the word.
• For the -ing and -ed streets, act out the word (hopping, clapping) and ask whether the vowel sound is short or long.

Privacy and safety

There are no ads, accounts, chat or leaderboards, and we don't run analytics or tracking on our learning games. The game makes no outside requests, and every word and sentence in it is family friendly. Progress is saved only on your device. It's free in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

Questions