Word Magic is a spelling test iPhone app, designed for kids between 3-6 years old. My daughter will be six next month (which is unbelievable to me), so we’ve been trying this app out this week.
Here’s a slice of the Word Magic App Store description:
Word Magic is designed keeping preschooler and kindergarten kids in mind. It is very ideal for kids between the ages of 3 to 6. It is an excellent application for kids to have fun with words and their spellings …
What Does It Do?
Word Magic sets out to make spelling practice fun for kids. For each word, the game presents a picture illustrating the word – and the missing letter or letters (depending on your setting) has to be guessed by your kiddo. There’s no time limit, and you’ve got a few settings options to add variety and / or difficulty to the game.
Some of the main options you can choose from include:
- Whether to have the missing letter at the beginning of words, the end of words, or the middle
- Whether to have just one missing letter or two
- Sound effects on/off
As the game progresses, it provides a running total of how many right and wrong spellings you’ve got – and awards prizes as you move through various stages / numbers of correct answers.
What Does It Do Well?
The sound effects in Word Magic are very good, and offer continual positive reinforcement as words are spelled correctly. Kids hear things like ‘Marvelous!’ and ‘You’re awesome’ as they get things right throughout the game. They also get prizes as they get more and more right – earning stars, flowers, and even cupcakes as they go along.
My daughter enjoyed playing the game quite a bit the first few times, and was visibly proud when she was doing very well at it and earning prizes.
The pictures used in the app are brightly colored, fun, and easily recognizable. My daughter never had to stop to figure out what word was expected on a screen. In fact, it’s an attractive looking app all the way around.
Performance is also quite good. Screens turn over quickly whether it’s in auto mode or via a manual tap. Stability has been rock solid too – no crashes or glitches at all so far.
What’s Not So Good?
The app does not keep track of your best scores, or how you’ve done in the past. This may be more important to a grown-up like me, and possibly not so much for kids – but I know my daughter likes having her scores tracked (and comparing with mine) in games like SmashWord.
It also doesn’t remember where you were when you last left the app, so you have to start fresh every time you exit and re-launch the program.
My biggest gripe with the app is there’s just not enough content to it yet. It currently has just 73 words and pictures in total. My daughter is up near the top end of the age range – and is super-duper smart and good with words of course 🙂 – but she grew bored with the app fairly quickly because of the limited word set. She knows all of them, and can do them all regardless of how many letters are missing or which part of the word the missing letters appear in.
The App Store description page states that more words / pictures will be added ‘on a regular basis’. I hope this is accurate, and hope that *a lot* of content is added soon. There really need to more levels and challenges for strong spellers. I think grouping of words into categories (whether by length of word or subject area or both) and tracking scores by category would be a nice addition.
Overall
Both my daughter and I like this app a lot. The overall concept – with well-drawn pictures and tons of positive reinforcement – is a very good one. If more content is added to help keep it fresh and challenging, and maybe some more features to recall where you left off and / or keep track of scores achieved, this would be a great app.
You can find Word Magic in the App Store now, for $0.99.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS:
