Worn-Out Word Instruction That’s Not Worthwhile

Wonster Words is an educational app designed for children ages 2 and up. Cute, animated monster characters in the app guide children through various games designed to build literacy skills. The app focuses on teaching pre-reading and early literacy skills including:

• Letter identification
• Letter names
• Letter sounds 
• Building vocabulary skills

Continue reading to see what a reading specialist shares about the quality of this app for literacy instruction. 

Is Wonster Words Easy to Use?

There are pros and cons to the overall usability of this app for kids. The following factors contribute to the ease of use as well as the user experience of the Wonster Words app. 

App Navigation

The sign-up process for Wonster Words is straightforward and user-friendly. The app offers a 7-day free trial followed by a subscription fee. The app allows for the easy addition of multiple players under the same email account, which is convenient for educators or families with more than one learner. The main menu of the app is categorized by game type and is well-organized which makes it easy to navigate the app. A player can easily exit any game at any time by tapping the back button at the top left of any screen. 

Game Settings 

The app provides clear instructions in American English. These instructions can be repeated on demand in any game, making it easy for young learners to follow along. Parents have the option to turn off the background music, which is advisable as it can be distracting. However, it’s worth noting that while the music can be disabled in the general menu, it remains active during mini-games. Some children, particularly those with auditory processing difficulties, may find this to be an ongoing distraction from learning. 

Player Engagement in Wonster Words

The following factors contribute to a child’s engagement while playing the Wonster Words app. 

Rewards

The Wonster Words app primarily uses intrinsic motivation to engage learners, which is ideal. Characters offer words of praise to encourage kids to keep playing and there are no elaborate material rewards to distract from the process of learning. 

Gameplay

There are various game types and themes that are visually appealing in the Wonster Words app. These games feature cute characters that capture children’s attention. Instructions are easy to follow and provide helpful clues so that young players don’t get stuck, encouraging independent gameplay. This design ensures that children can maintain their attention and successfully complete the games. 

However, Wonster Words does not start teaching easier concepts before building to more complex ones. Any game can be played at any time in the app. Therefore, many of the games in the app would be challenging for a new reader to understand and apply. There needs to be more structure—ideally, a reliable scope and sequence. 

Quality of Literacy Learning in Wonster Words  

Let’s consider the main success and downfall of phonics instruction in the Wonster Words app. 

Sequential Learning

Literacy experts advocate for sequential learning. This means that basic phonics concepts are introduced first and gradually build towards more complex ideas. Wonster Words incorporates a bit of this approach in its “Words” mini-game, which begins with simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words like “hop” before advancing to more phonetically complex words like “beach.” 

However, this sequential structure is not consistently applied throughout the app. Other games may start with more complex words from the outset. Additionally, all games are accessible at any time without a required order and there is no publicly-available phonics plan or scope and sequence for Wonster Words. This suggests that it does not follow a structured phonics progression, which could be detrimental to children’s literacy development.

Letter Sounds

Multiple games in the Wonster Words app focus on teaching or practicing letter sounds. In the “Letter Sound” game, the letter sounds are generally represented clearly and accurately for an American English accent. 

Unfortunately, the representation of letter sounds breaks down in the “Early Phonics” and most other mini-games. A common game in the app is to start with a word that the player needs to find or collect letters to ‘build’ the given word. Most of the chosen words in the game would be very difficult for a new reader to build on their own. 

For example, the first word, ‘acrobat’ has three syllables. As the letters are found by the player and ‘held’, the letter makes its sound. The issue is that most of the sounds are not entirely accurate and have another sound or ‘schwa’ added to them. For example, the letter <T> makes ‘ti ti ti ti ti’ sounds when it should simply sound like /t/. When children learn letter sounds inaccurately like this, it can cause difficulties with reading and spelling later on. 

Confusingly, the consonant blends in the game are treated as one unit with the letters moving as a whole connected chunk. This is unhelpful as consonant blends have two sounds and should be treated as such. 

On occasion, an entirely incorrect sound is given for the letter in the word. For example, the <G> in the word ‘giftwrap’ has a /j/ sound (also, gift wrap should be two separate words). Again, learning letter sounds inaccurately can hinder a child’s literacy development, so these mistakes in the app are significant and worth mentioning. 

Phonemic Awareness

Wonster Words lacks direct instruction in phonemic awareness, which is crucial for developing early reading skills. Essential phonemic awareness skills, such as blending sounds to read a word and segmenting sounds to spell a word, are not specifically targeted by the app. 

While the app does name the letters in the correct order when a word is successfully built, this feature is less effective than practicing blending sounds together to read words, which is a more critical component for early readers.

Digital Books

Wonster Words includes a books section including these categories of texts:

• Wonster Books 
• Songs 
• Introductory Books
• Level A 

The app offers the option to the child to read the books themselves or have them read aloud. If new readers are interested in these books they would likely not have much luck reading the books to themselves. This is because the books are not decodable. Decodable books contain sounds and words that children are familiar with and can sound out on their own. 

The books in Wonster Words contain many phonetically challenging words that are not taught in the app and that any new reader would have difficulty reading. These books are not suitable for beginning readers as they are not decodable. Decodable books have words that have been previously learned and practiced.

While the books are decent for listening, they do not stand out as exceptional in terms of supporting early reading skills like decoding (word-reading). 

Should I Let My Child Play Wonster Words?

The Wonster Words app offers a visually appealing and user-friendly platform for young children to engage in early literacy activities. While the app’s cute characters and engaging games can capture kids’ attention and provide some valuable literacy practice, it falls short in several key areas. 

The app’s inconsistent phonics progression and inaccurate representation of letter sounds could impede effective literacy learning. Additionally, the lack of focused phonemic awareness instruction and the use of non-decodable books limit its effectiveness for beginning readers. Although the app is easy to navigate and provides a fun learning environment, it may not be the most reliable tool for building foundational reading skills. 

For a more comprehensive literacy experience, explore other phonics apps for your child from our expert reviews at phonics.org.

Wonster Words App: Overall Ratings

Quality of Literacy Instruction: 2 / 5

Usability:  4 / 5

Engagement: 3 / 5