Reading Specialist Questions the Sounds – LetterSchool - Block Letters Review

As a game for writing practice, the app seems good, clever, and visually appealing. However, as a reading specialist, I question how the app gets such high reviews when it is presenting phonetically confusing information for young children. Any good introductory phonetic information for young children needs to be consistent and as clear as possible. The designers have presented inconsistent phonetic information, and have chosen questionable examples for words beginning with alphabet sounds. Three of the 5 vowels are fine- "a" (axe or ant) and "e" (egg or elephant) and "o" (octopus and ostrich.) All six of these are short sounds of the vowels. For i, they use ice cream or igloo; both the long and short sounds, respectively. And for "u" they include two examples of the long sound of "u" with ukulele aned unicorn. Garage is used for "g" in one example, but the soft "g" is also included with giraffe. X is just plain wrong, as x does not say zzzz and in xylophone. Reading specialists present consistent information to beginning readers: the short, more predictable sound comes first. The long sounds are treated as exceptions in alphabet charts. The soft "g" should be left out until later as it is less confusing. X has never said ZZZZZ. It may seem harmless to present this information carelessly, but I believe kids deserve the best start possible. This app needs to clean up the sounds section.
Review by Strictlyspeaking on LetterSchool - Block Letters.