For parents

You do not need to know what a fricative is.

Your speech pathologist gives you a sound to practise. Say & Play holds the word list, the level and the counting — you listen, and press one of three buttons.

A ten-minute session, start to finish

0:00

Open it and press Play

The sound, position and level from last time are already on the home screen. Nothing to set up again.

0:10

Let them pick the game

Whichever one they choose runs the same words. Letting them choose is most of the buy-in.

0:20

Word, say, tap. Repeat.

A word appears with its target letters marked. Your child says it, you press Correct, Retry or Skip, and the game takes its turn.

9:00

Gabby reads out the score

Accuracy, stars earned, and the words that were hard today — the shortlist worth mentioning at the next appointment.

9:30

One idea for the rest of the day

A specific thing to try at dinner or bathtime with the same sound. Two minutes, no app needed.

Thirty says is the daily goal, not a rule. On a bad day, five says and a cheerful stop beats thirty and a meltdown.

What the three buttons mean for you

Correct

If you would accept it in ordinary conversation today, press it. You are not marking an exam — you are counting attempts that were good enough for where your child is now.

Retry

Give the model again and let them have another go. Two retries is plenty; a third turns practice into a battle, and the app has already recorded that the word was hard.

Skip

For when the word is not the problem — a confusing picture, a lost moment, a sibling shouting. Skips are deliberately left out of the accuracy score.

Your therapist beats this page. If they have told you what counts as correct for your child right now — or given you a cue to use — follow that. Say & Play is the practice, not the plan.

Questions parents actually ask

Does it listen to my child?

No. There is no microphone and no speech recognition anywhere in the app. You are the one judging what you hear, because you can hear the difference an algorithm cannot.

Should I say the word first?

If your child needs the model, yes — and that is the point. The app deliberately never speaks the sound, because a synthetic version of the exact sound they are learning gives them the wrong thing to copy.

What if they get every word wrong?

Retry twice, skip, and drop back to word level. If a whole session is retries, stop and tell your speech pathologist. That is useful information for them, not a failure on your part.

Can two children share one device?

Yes. Each child gets their own profile, with separate stars, streaks and history. Switching between them is two taps.

Do we need internet?

Only to install it. After that it runs offline — waiting rooms, car journeys, planes. The app itself has no account to log into.

Where does my child’s data go?

Nowhere. Profiles, streaks and session history are stored on your device and never uploaded, because nothing is collected in the first place. There are no ads either.

Keeping it a game, not a chore

Stop while they still want more

Ending on a good run is what makes tomorrow easy. The streak counter does not care how long you played.

Praise the sound, not the child

“That /s/ was perfect” tells them what to repeat. “Good job” does not.

Let them beat you

Choose Grown-up instead of Buddy and type your name. Beating a real person is worth about ten extra words of motivation.

Use the carryover idea

The one line at the end of each session is the bit that moves the sound out of practice and into real talking.

One subscription. Everything in it.

Every sound, every blend, all twelve ways to play, unlimited child profiles. No coin packs, no locked levels, no ads.

$20 a month, or $200 a year · cancel any time