Academics
SoundTots
Hear the first sound in a word with Mumble the mole - the hidden rule of a gentle picture-connection game. Match pictures that start with the same sound to lay a path across the board. The app reads to you, everything is spoken, and a mix-up is just a friendly retry. For ages 3-5.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 10 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, asks, and patiently scaffolds learning.
#E8983B Characters who teach
Meet the cast
SoundTots is a band of burrow-and-shore friends who help the youngest players hear the FIRST sound in a word - the secret rule of a picture-connection game. Mumble the mole is the hero; the cast are Mumble's friends. Everything is spoken and no-fail.
Mumble
Initial-phoneme isolation - a mole who mumbles the FIRST SOUND of everything; hearing a word's opening sound IS phoneme isolation, the legality rule of the game
Read chapter →
Sef
The sound family - a seal who sorts pictures by their opening sound; grouping words that share a first-sound IS a sound family
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Bittle
Put / connect - a beetle who lays the connecting stones edge to edge; joining two matched sounds IS how the path grows
Read chapter →
Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Hear the first sound in a word with Mumble the mole - the hidden rule of a gentle picture-connection game. Match pictures that start with the same sound to lay a path across the board. The app reads to you, everything is spoken, and a mix-up is just a friendly retry. For ages 3-5.
How SoundTots handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages
SoundTots runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
SoundTots is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch