Sound Bricks

About Sound Bricks

Pibbit the robot has a broken talking chip, so he can only say words a child builds for him. Each word is a picture and a spoken word: the child drags letter bricks into his speaker to spell it, then slides a finger under the word to hear him read it. Most words only change one brick from the last one, cat to hat to bat, which is how children learn that changing a sound changes the word. Put in the wrong brick and Pibbit reads what you actually made, so a mistake turns into a listening lesson. Ten chips, 47 short-vowel words, no timer.

Sound Bricks is one of our words & letters games for kids. This one plays in the iPhone and iPad app rather than in the browser, but 33 of our games are free to play right here — browse the full library to find them.

How to Play

• Listen to the word, or tap the picture to hear it again.
• Tap a brick to hear its sound, then drag it into Pibbit’s speaker.
• When the word is right, slide your finger under it and Pibbit reads it out.
• Often only one brick needs to change for the next word. Find which one.

Tips & Tricks

• Say the word slowly together before building it: c-a-t.
• If Pibbit says the wrong word, listen for which sound is different, then swap that brick.
• On the word ladders, ask which part of the word changed: the start, the middle or the end.

What Kids Learn

Sound Bricks practises the two halves of early reading. Building a word from its sounds is spelling, and teachers call it encoding. Reading the built word back by blending its sounds is decoding. Children who do both, back and forth, tend to read sooner than children who only do one.

The words follow the order many phonics programmes use: the -at and -an families first, then each short vowel, then swapping the middle sound, then adding a letter (pin to spin) and two-letter starts like sl and dr. Every word is spelled the way it sounds. There are no tricky words, silent letters or long vowels yet.

• Spelling short words by their sounds (encoding)
• Blending sounds into a word (decoding)
• Swapping one sound to make a new word
• Short vowels a, e, i, o, u and two-letter blends at the start

Curriculum links

For teachers and homeschooling parents, here is where Sound Bricks lines up with what children are taught at school:

• Common Core RF.K.2.E: Add or substitute individual sounds in simple, one-syllable words to make new words
• Common Core RF.K.3.B: Associate the short sounds with the common spellings for the five major vowels
• Common Core RF.1.2.B: Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends
• Common Core RF.1.3.B: Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words

What Age Is Sound Bricks For?

Best for ages 4 to 7. Four-year-olds who know a few letter sounds can manage the first three chips, where only the first brick changes, especially with an adult beside them. Five- and six-year-olds in kindergarten and first grade get the most from the later chips, where they spell whole words and spot which sound changed. Beginning Sounds is a good warm-up if a child doesn’t know letter sounds yet.

Tips for Parents

Sound out the word together before your child starts building. Stretching it, mmmaaap, helps them hear each part.

When Pibbit says the wrong word, don’t jump in. Ask “what did he say?” and let your child hear the difference.

After a chip, read the words in the jar aloud together and make up a silly sentence with three of them.

Try It Without a Screen

• Write cat on a sticky note, then change one letter at a time and read each new word together.
• Use fridge magnets to build a word, then ask your child to make it say something else.
• Play “robot talk”: say a word in separate sounds, like d-o-g, and let your child blend it.

Sound Bricks — Frequently Asked Questions