Wobbly
Wobbly, a friendly blue pencil with round glasses, waving hello
Ages 3–8 · iPhone & iPad

Big skills for little hands.

Wobbly teaches your child to write, read, listen, and count! They watch each stroke, trace it with a finger or Apple Pencil, and earn stars and cheers. Never a buzzer, never a red mark.

Download on the App Store
62
letters & numbers to trace
500+
words to read
50
decodable sentences
9
phonics reading stages

Four big skills, one happy pencil

Writing, reading, listening, and numbers grow together, all taught the same gentle, forgiving way. Wobbly shows, your child does, and everybody cheers.

✍️ Write letters & words

All 26 letters, upper and lower case (A–Z and a–z), with the correct stroke order and direction, then whole words traced letter by letter, hearing each sound as they go. Wobbly draws every stroke first, then little fingers trace it. Wobbles and overshoots still count when the idea is right. There are tracing worksheets too, rows of practice cells with no printer and no paper, quietly marked so a grown-up can look them over later.

📖 Learn to read

A full phonics journey: 26 letter sounds, 90+ picture words, 500+ decodable words, 34 word families, blends, digraphs, magic e, vowel teams, word endings like -ing and -ed, tricky words, and 50 whole sentences, across 9 gentle reading stages.

🎧 Train little ears

Seven listening games, all free: match rhymes, clap out syllables, catch first sounds, find the letter that makes a sound, find the picture that starts with a letter, squeeze two sounds into a blend, and build words tile by tile, with a cast of 54 friendly animals. Strong ears make strong readers.

🔢 Count and write numbers

Form every digit from 0 to 9 with the same patient guidance, building the foundation for counting and early math.

See Wobbly in action

Ten screens from the real app, the same ten on its App Store page. Nothing here is a mockup. Scroll sideways to see them all.

From first squiggle to first sentence: the Wobbly splash screen, and a seven day free trial with no card, no account and nothing to cancel. First they watch, then they try: Wobbly draws the stroke while a pointing hand shows where to start. It does not stop at letters: the reading home, with all nine phonics levels on one screen. Never wrong, never stuck: the gentle b versus d lesson for the letters children flip most. Where letters become reading: sounding out b a g one letter at a time, then reading the whole word. Real books that answer back: a storybook page built only from sounds the child already knows. Seven sound games, none of them locked: the Sound Games room. A path, not a pile of games: the Letter Sounds trail, with treasure chests along the way. From letters to whole words: tracing a word letter by letter on ruled lines. One price, not one a month: the Full Access offer, a single 24.99 dollar purchase for the whole family.
From first squiggle to first sentence: the Wobbly splash screen, and a seven day free trial with no card, no account and nothing to cancel. First they watch, then they try: Wobbly draws the stroke while a pointing hand shows where to start. It does not stop at letters: the reading home, with all nine phonics levels on one screen. Never wrong, never stuck: the gentle b versus d lesson for the letters children flip most. Where letters become reading: sounding out b a g one letter at a time, then reading the whole word. Real books that answer back: a storybook page built only from sounds the child already knows. No printer needed: the iPad tracing worksheet, each letter down the side with practice cells across its row. A path, not a pile of games: the Letter Sounds trail, with treasure chests along the way. From letters to whole words: tracing a word letter by letter on ruled lines. One price, not one a month: the Full Access offer, a single 24.99 dollar purchase for the whole family.

How Wobbly teaches

The same four steps, every letter, every time, so a child always knows what happens next. It is the whole method, and there is nothing else to learn.

  1. Watch

    Wobbly draws every stroke first. A traveling dot and a spoken prompt show exactly where to start and which way to go, and a little gloved hand rides the line as it is drawn, so a child who cannot read a word yet still knows exactly what is being asked.

  2. Trace

    Friendly arrows and gentle vibrations guide little fingers, and the tracing is deliberately forgiving, so trying always feels good. Start a stroke from the wrong end and Wobbly quietly rewinds and points at the right place, because a backwards letter looks fine while rehearsing a habit that is expensive to undo later. The pairs children flip most, b and d, p and q, get their own gentle lesson.

  3. Hear

    Every letter has its sound and a picture word (“A is for Apple”), so writing and reading reinforce each other from the very first day.

  4. Celebrate

    Finishing always earns at least one star, plus collectible stickers for first tries, comebacks, and personal bests. Coaching is specific and kind, spoken aloud: “Let’s make the tall line again!” Because most four-year-olds can’t read yet.

An adventure, not a worksheet

Every reading level is a treasure trail of little lessons, word shelves, and surprises, and Wobbly walks beside your child the whole way.

🗺️ Treasure trails & chests

Each level is a path of stops to hop along. Finishing a stretch earns a treasure chest: a playful “Help Wobbly!” quiz built from brand-new words, so you know your child is really decoding, not memorizing.

📚 Interactive storybooks

Thirteen storybooks where every word is one your child can already sound out. Poke the pictures and they squeak, pop, and moo; finished books wait on your child’s very own bookshelf to read again.

🧭 Hands-free reading mode

Autopilot carries your child from word to word and stop to stop, no menus to find. Put the app down mid-lesson and a bookmark reopens the exact same step next time.

🎤 Say it back

Tap “Try it” and Wobbly listens while your child says the sound, word, or sentence, then praises what was right. All listening happens on your device; the audio is never stored and never sent anywhere.

Praise the effort, grow the child

The way we talk to children while they learn shapes how hard they try, and whether they want to try again at all. Wobbly is built around one well-studied idea from early-childhood research: praise the effort and the progress, never the “smart.” Kids who learn that ability grows with practice take on harder things, bounce back from stumbles, and go further. Every cheer, star, and gentle nudge is designed to build exactly that.

“You worked so hard on that tall line!” teaches a child far more than “You’re so clever.” One grows with every try. The other quietly whispers that a stumble means you’re not.

Wobbly only ever says the first kind.

The grown-up side

Made for grown-ups, too

A quieter room behind a lock, where you set the rules and see the progress. Your child never opens this door.

👨‍👩‍👧 Up to three kids, free

Each child gets their own profile, stars, and progress. Nothing ever mixes between them.

🔒 A private Parent Zone

Setup is grown-up-only, gated by a quick adult check before anything is saved. Then Face ID, Touch ID, or a PIN guards progress insights, replays of your child’s actual strokes, and every setting. Kids never see any of it.

🎯 Starts at the right level

During setup you pick a starting point, or let a short listen-and-tap placement quiz suggest one. No child sits through letters they already know.

📄 Worksheets you can look over

Every practice cell your child traces is quietly marked and kept as one sheet, so you can see how a whole page went and replay any letter stroke by stroke.

😴 Wobbly keeps your schedule

Choose the hours Wobbly is awake each day. Outside them, your child meets a sleeping pencil and a lullaby instead of a lockout, and a grown-up can always grant a little extra time.

☁️ Optional iCloud backup

Off by default. A parent can back up each child’s progress to your family’s own private iCloud and restore it on a new device. We run no servers and can never see it.

♿ Built for everyone

Full VoiceOver support, Dynamic Type, Reduce Motion, adjustable haptics, and high-contrast guide colors.

🔒 Private by design. We collect nothing.

  • Every drawing, star, and recording stays on your device. No account, no server, no cloud AI. (The optional iCloud backup is off by default and goes only to your family’s own iCloud.)
  • No ads, no analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs.
  • App Store privacy label: Data Not Collected.
  • All purchases and settings live behind a parent gate. Children never see prices or buy buttons.

Read the full Privacy Policy and COPPA notice.

Honest pricing, no surprises

Every new family starts with a 7-day free trial of everything. When it ends, it simply ends: there is no card to enter and nothing that can ever bill you. After that a real slice of Wobbly stays free forever, so you can keep going without buying anything. Here is exactly where the line sits, so nobody finds it on day two.

🎁 Free forever

  • Letters A–E and numbers 0–3, both cases, with the whole tracing experience: the stroke demo, the guidance, the stars, the coaching.
  • Your child’s first 20 reading words, and the sentences that close the first level.
  • The first treasure chest of each of the first two reading levels.
  • All seven listening games. Not one of them is ever locked.
  • Every letter’s sound and picture words.
  • Up to three children, each kept separate, and the whole grown-up zone with a weekly report card.
  • The last three stroke recordings and worksheets for each letter.

🔓 What Full Access adds

  • The other 21 letters in both cases and numbers 4–9, plus whole words to trace.
  • All 9 reading levels: 500+ decodable words and 50 sentences.
  • All 13 interactive storybooks. The free tier has none of these yet.
  • As many children as you like.
  • Unlimited stroke recordings and worksheets, kept forever, with no watermark on anything you save or share.
  • Report card windows longer than a week, and deeper practice insights.
One simple price

Full Access

$24.99
one time · whole family · forever

One payment, for every child and every device you own. No subscription. Buy once, done, and we’ll never upsell you again.

One thing to know before you download: until the app is bought, a grown-up opens each session. Wobbly asks for Face ID, Touch ID or your PIN when it starts, then hands the device to your child. Once the free week has passed, that is also the only place the purchase screen can appear, behind the gate you just passed, with a large “No thank you” button. Your child never meets a price. Buying the app ends the lock and the ask, both at once, forever.