Words & Sources
The kid sees a word. The parent sees where it came from, who curated it, and why it's on this page. Every word in the game traces back to a vetted source — campaign curriculum, sight-word research, spelling-bee canon, or community-contributed K-3 lists. Recording is done in batch with one consistent voice, then checked.
1.Quick numbers
- 462 curriculum words across 10 chapters · all recorded
- Practice starter set · sourced from Dolch + Fry + Scripps + community lists · recording in progress
- One voice across the whole game · same narrator for curriculum, sentences, and practice words
2.Campaign vocabulary (curriculum)
The 10-chapter story uses four word categories the way reading research recommends. Tap any category to see the rationale.
Heart Words · 62 in the campaign
Irregular sight words that don't sound the way they look — the, said, was, of, are… These are learned by heart (memorization), not by sounding out. Modern reading research calls out the irregular part of each word — kids learn the ♡ part by heart and decode the rest.
Sourced from: Reading Rockets orthographic-mapping research (Linda Farrell, Michael Hunter, Tina Osenga at Readsters) and the Dolch 220 sight-word list (Edward Dolch, 1936).
Flash Words · 65 in the campaign
Decodable high-frequency words — and, can, get, run, jump… These DO follow phonics rules. The goal is automaticity: kids practice sounding them out fast until they're instant.
Sourced from: Dolch 220 + Fry first-300 frequency list (Edward Fry, 1980), filtered for decodability.
Vocabulary words · 175 in the campaign
Bigger words from grade-level reading lists — mountain, scientist, waterfall… These extend word knowledge beyond the high-frequency core.
Sourced from: K-3 grade-level vocabulary research + curated narrative fit (each word ties to a chapter's setting and story).
Phonics Companion words · 167 in the campaign
Story-themed pattern words for Hard Mode — knock, splash, gleam, glide… Each chapter's Companion tier targets a specific phonics lesson (silent letters, vowel teams, magic-e, r-controlled vowels, blends).
Sourced from: Orton-Gillingham multisensory structured-literacy patterns + per-chapter phonics curation.
3.Practice mode — extra word sources
Practice Mode lets a kid drill words outside the campaign — tricky words they've missed, custom lists a parent enters, and a vetted dictionary of additional K-3 vocabulary. These sources feed the starter recording batch.
Dolch 220 sight words
The 220 most-frequent sight words for K-3 readers, compiled by Edward William Dolch in 1936 and still the foundational sight-word list across modern reading curricula. Five graded levels: pre-primer (40 words), primer (52), grade 1 (41), grade 2 (46), grade 3 (41).
Why it's here: If a kid masters Dolch 220, they can read roughly 50–75% of words in typical K-3 print. That's the "high-frequency core" Practice Mode covers.
Status: Most are already in the campaign. The candidates Practice Mode adds = Dolch 220 minus what's already recorded.
Fry top 300 high-frequency words
Edward Fry's 1980 list of the 1,000 most-frequent words in English-language print, ranked by frequency. Practice Mode pulls the first 300 (the cohort that covers ~65% of all print exposure for early readers).
Why it's here: Fry's list overlaps with Dolch but extends into vocabulary that didn't make Dolch's original cutoff. The combined Dolch + Fry top-300 set is the K-3 frequency canon.
Status: Diff'd against campaign + Dolch; net new candidates are recorded as 11labs batches finish.
Scripps National Spelling Bee · One Bee Study Words
The Scripps National Spelling Bee publishes graded study lists ("One Bee" / "Two Bee" / "Three Bee") for school-level spelling bees. The 2nd-grade One Bee list (50 words) and the 3rd-grade One Bee list (50 words) are included here as the spelling-challenge tier of Practice Mode.
Why it's here: Dolch and Fry are sight-word foundations. Scripps One Bee adds the next layer — words a kid would actually face in a school spelling bee. giraffe, taxicab, sandwich, breathe, mansion, scribbly, recess…
Source: Scripps National Spelling Bee, official 2022-2023 and 2024-2025 One Bee Study Word lists.
Status: 100 unique words queued for the recording batch.
Community-contributed K-3 lists
Word lists shared by homeschool teachers and reading specialists who've spent time with the game. Currently includes a 2nd-and-3rd-grade list from a homeschool teacher whose kids play the game.
Why it's here: The people closest to the kids know which words they actually struggle with. These lists pick up vocabulary the research-canon sources miss.
Status: Merging into the candidate set on a rolling basis. New contributions welcome — we'll add a contact channel for that when one exists.
4.How recording works
The 11labs pipeline
Word audio is generated with 11labs voice cloning — same voice across every word in the game so the kid hears one consistent narrator. We batch-record in groups of 100–200 words at a time, then split and quality-check each clip before it goes live.
Why one voice: Children learning to read benefit from auditory consistency. Switching narrators mid-vocabulary adds cognitive load that has nothing to do with reading.
Why batch: Quality matters more than speed. A 100-word batch can be split, reviewed, re-cut, and uploaded in a single sitting.
Custom words (parent-entered)
If a parent enters a word that isn't yet in the recorded set, the game falls back to the device's built-in text-to-speech for that word — every modern browser ships with one. Quality varies by device, but the kid still gets audio scaffolding.
As we record more words, custom entries that match a recorded word automatically upgrade from TTS to the consistent 11labs voice.
5.What's not here
Honest gaps so this list doesn't oversell:
- 4th-grade-and-up vocabulary. The game targets ages 5–9. Older-grade words would water down the K-3 focus.
- Specialty vocabularies. Medical terms, regional dialects, name spellings, and proper nouns are out of scope. Kids learning those have better-suited tools.
- Other languages. English-language reading instruction only, for now.
- Dynamic difficulty adjustment. The game scaffolds (hints, modes) but doesn't currently re-rank word difficulty per kid. Practice Mode is the answer to that.
6.Questions or suggestions?
If you've got a list of words you'd like the game to cover, a research source we should add, or a teacher's recommendation, we'd love to fold it in. A contact channel is on the roadmap — until it's live, the brand line stands: by a dad who sees differently, for his daughter and beyond.