Wonster Words (Pro Edition) - spelling with ABC phonics by Puzzling

Kids catch floating letter "ghosts" to drag them to their correct place and words. Choose a word family (e.g., words with "at" or "sh") and then choose from the available eight words. When kids tap the letters, they hear what sound they make. For the target sound, instead of hearing letters like "s" and "h" sounded out separately, kids hear and manipulate the blended sound in words like brush, shadow, and bashful. Once they spell the word, kids watch a short animation demonstrating the word's meaning. There's also an occasional distractor activity, like playing with an animal after spelling its name. A special "racers" game has a progressive story line with word puzzles and games along the way.

Wonster Words (Pro Edition) - spelling with ABC phonics by Puzzling does a great job of addressing the idiosyncrasies of written English. Instead of singling out each individual letter sound, kids work with phonemes, or the language sounds actually present in words. However, this attention is paid only to the target sounds, so for example in the "ut" group, the word "peanut" is still sounded out as "p" "e" "a" "n" "ut". Though the animations and accompanying sentences give context and add an opportunity for vocabulary growth, they're sometimes a bit odd, or not quite at the right place for young kids.

Plus, some design issues are distracting: For example, it would be nice to be able to turn the music off; it would be better if kids had to place letters in the correct order; and whether the graphics, animations, and distractor games are cute and appealing or cheesy and unsophisticated is up for debate. All in all, the phonetic approach and vocabulary context make this a step up from simple sound-it-out apps.