Learning Letters: Toddler's First Spelling App

FirstWords: Animals App

Your toddler always grabbing for you phone? Why not keep their fingers occupied while engaging him/her with a great app teaching them letters and forming words?

I love the FirstWords: Animals app for iPhone, iPod, and iPad. My two year old daughter absolutely loves it. She loves the animals, and I love that she is learning letters and how letters make up words.

The app basically works like this; there is an image of an animal, and the animal word is spoken. A jumble of the letters that make up the word are below it. Your child touches one of the letters in the jumble and drags it  up to the boxes to match it up to the same letter. The app also has a "magnetic" feature about it, so when your child drags the letter close to it's place, it automatically snatches the letter in correct position in the word. Your child can also touch the letter in the box, which triggers a hint by "shaking" the letter in the jumble below as another method of playing the game. This feature can also be turned off for older kids needing more of a challenge, and you can also change the settings to how long you want the words to be, and adjust difficulty levels. Once the word is completely spelled, the speaker audibly spells out the word for further reinforcement, followed by a little animation of the animal.

Only after a few demonstrations on my part, did my daughter pick up on the concept of dragging the letter to it's match. It's really an easy app to introduce to your toddler to get their mind thinking about spelling. Right now we are working on selecting the letters from left to right in order. 

There are several different kinds of FirstWords apps, like a Spanish version, the Deluxe, etc., so go with the one that you think your child will enjoy the best. There is also a free sampler of this app, if you want to try it out before purchasing it. The app is $1.99, and it comes with 39 animals/words.

Get the app now