TinyWords

I created this app to address a specific and common challenge in learning to read that I was seeing in my daughter: the habit of using context and guessing a word after only actually "reading" the first letter or so. While clever, this can slow the development of skills needed to read unfamiliar words, especially when context clues aren't available.

🧠 The Problem: The "Smart Guesser"
Many kids learn to guess words using picture clues or the first letter (e.g., seeing 'P' and guessing 'Pig' when the word is 'Pat'). This can become a major hurdle when they encounter new words without obvious context.

This app gently breaks that habit by making it unreliable. It does this by presenting a written target word and images of three-letter words that differ by only a single letter (e.g., CAT / CAR / CAN or PET / PAT / POT). To succeed, the child must look closely at every letter in the target word to get the right answer, making guessing an unreliable strategy.

🎮 How It Works
• A word is displayed on screen and (optionally) spelled aloud.
• The child is shown three pictures and must select the one that matches the target word.

That's it. This simple, repetitive exercise reinforces the habit of careful, phonetic reading.

✨ Key Features
• Focused Word Library: Features 119 child-friendly, three-letter words, providing targeted practice on CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) patterns.
• Helpful Hints: A simple hint system highlights the letter that varies among the choices and provides text-to-speech spelling of the target word, guiding the child on where to focus.
• Audio Reinforcement: All words and images have clear text-to-speech pronunciations and spellings to connect the visual and auditory aspects of reading.
• Child-Friendly Design: A simple, focused interface with clear goals and recognizable feedback.
• Background Music: Various different types of background music for children who need that little distraction to focus better.
• Parent-Friendly Privacy: This was written by a parent, so no ads, no in-app purchases, no data collection.

🌱 This App is Growing
I am committed to making this app a tool that grows with my child's reading ability. Future updates are planned to introduce new challenges, such as:
• Digraphs (e.g., th, ch, sh)
• Less similar word groups to broaden recognition skills
• Audio-to-text matching challenges

🤖 AI Content Disclosure
While the game concept and user experience were all natural, I'm not a graphic artist, musician, or ever programmed an Android app. But AI has arrived, and, evidently, so have I. The below content in the game was generated in whole or part using these tools:
• Images: Sora
• Music: Suno
• Coding Assistance: Claude Code, OpenAI, Gemini

The full source of the game is available at:
https://github.com/EdanStarfire/TinyWords