Why we built this
Better Speller started with my son's weekly spelling list and me reading words out loud across the kitchen table. It worked, barely, until we both lost interest somewhere around word six.
The apps we tried were close but never quite it. None of them let him practice writing the words with Apple Pencil, which is how he has to do it at school. None let me record the words in my own voice. None let me set a list up once and share it with his device. And the ones with games buried them under ads, accounts and features neither of us asked for.
So we built the one we wanted: our list, in my voice, written by hand or typed, with four games he'll play without being asked, and nothing else. It's still what we use the night before the Friday test.
What we didn't plan for was his sister. She's working on sight words rather than weekly spelling lists, and the games turned out to be just as good for those. She asks to play them, which is not something either of us expected to say about spelling practice.
- Alex, Better Speller