# Tadpole: Phonics & Kids Games — Reading, spelling & math fun

> Reading, spelling & math fun (iPhone/iPad app by Difflex.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tadpole-phonics-and-kids-games/id6775974514 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Difflex](https://appshunter.io/developer/1895264643)
- Category: Education, Games, Family
- Price: Free with in-app purchases
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.0 · 155 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-06-12
- Data updated: 2026-11-05

## What is Tadpole?

Tadpole is a collection of calm learning games for children in Pre-K to 3rd grade. They cover phonics, reading, spelling, math, telling time, nature, geography and first words in Spanish and French.

The phonics games follow the order of sounds taught in schools, so what your child practices at home matches the classroom. Set your child's grade and every game plays at their level.

THE GAMES
• Phonics & reading: Tick or Fix, Fredle, ABC Gap, b or d
• Spelling: Spell Duel, Spelldle
• Math: Sumdle, Number Words
• Telling time: Read the Clock
• Colors & positions: Find the Frog, Make a Rainbow
• Make & build: Make a Cake, Build a Building, Kitty Jigsaw
• Nature & animals: Flower Match, Name the Flower, Doggies, Kitties, Dinos
• Geography: Flagle
• Languages: Hispanic Flagle, Spanish Words, Spanish Sounds, Le or La, El or La

WHY PARENTS LIKE IT
• No ads.
• Plays offline on journeys and in waiting rooms.
• Calm, focused play without overstimulating graphics.
• Designed with children, for children.
• Made by a parent with a little help from his twins.

FREE AND PREMIUM
Some games are free to play every day. Tadpole Premium unlocks every game with unlimited play. One subscription covers the whole collection. It renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage or cancel it in your store account settings.

Terms of Use: https://tadpolegames.com/terms
Privacy: https://tadpolegames.com/privacy
Questions or ideas? hi@tadpolegames.com

## Pricing and in-app purchases

Base price: Free.

**Subscriptions**

| Subscription | Price | Period |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tadpole Premium Monthly | $3.99 | per month |
| Tadpole Premium Yearly | $24.99 | per year |


## Is Tadpole safe?

Not enough ratings yet to assess Tadpole.

## Is Tadpole legit?

Tadpole: Phonics & Kids Games has limited verification signals. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Tadpole is 58 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 1.17 — 2026-10-10

Fredle's word list has been refined.

Still calm, still ad-free.

### 1.16 — 2026-09-28

New installs open with a short welcome: your child's school year, the topics, and Premium.

Build a Building now has its own preview.

All games is now at the top of every game's menu, one tap back to the whole list.

Fredle speaks French. A child in France who asks to be shown a word now hears it sounded out in French, one sound as each tile lights, then the whole word.

Gentler section colours: Numbers is peach, Calming lavender and Art rose, so every section has a colour of its own.

Fredle in French on an English phone now says each word's meaning aloud, after the French.

The next step in Make a Cake and Build a Building now glows.

Make a Cake, Build a Building and Make a Rainbow are calm again: every child drags the pictures into place, whatever their school year, instead of being asked to spell words like violet.

Make a Cake's clip in the welcome now finishes a cake, with its celebration.

In French on an English phone, trace a word and its English meaning sits underneath. A child on a French phone sees the words on their own, as before.

Spelldle's letters stay in two rows on a small phone, so the whole board fits on screen.

The app opens on its own games page now: the shelves, your child's school year and the free goes.

The app no longer asks you to download the app.

French word meanings read as labels now, not definitions.

The games page shows the start of every game's picture, titles and all, and Spell Duel and Spelldle have real pictures.

The Languages shelf now reads "Spanish and French", the languages its games teach today.

The Numbers shelf now reads "Sums, numbers and time", which is what its games teach today.

The voice that tells your child what to do at the start of each game now speaks calmly and plainly, without acting the line out.

The welcome's first slide reads softer: its promises in the brand's dark green, its heading in a warmer grey.

The welcome's first slide shows its games bigger and its promises clearer, and the games page's top bar lines up on the left.

The welcome's game clips play smoothly and let the confetti land before the next one, and tapping a topic plays its game.

When a game offers a wrong letter to choose between, it now only offers letters your child's school year has taught. A child in their first term of Reception is no longer asked to rule out a j they have not met.

Words that pop up over a game are outlined, so they stay readable over green.

Still calm, still ad-free.

### 1.15 — 2026-09-22

ABC Gap fits the screen again. On smaller iPhones the top of the alphabet was cut off and the "drag the missing letter" line hid behind the big letter keys, with no way to scroll to them. The keys now give up a little height so the whole a-z and the hint are always in view, and every full-screen game now sizes itself to the space the app really leaves it rather than to the whole screen.

Colour It and Draw It now show a Premium tag on the games page. They are the two games the daily free goes do not cover, and the tag says so before a child opens one.

Every game now says what to do when your child opens it. Children who can't read yet hear the task ("Fix the word", "Which dog is this?") in a warm recorded voice, with a British or American accent to match where you are. It speaks once when they switch games, not on every round, and stays quiet when Game Sounds is off. Fredle's "Show me a word" now really does speak in a British voice for children in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and Singapore, and says a word the first time it is asked.

Fixed a games page that could slide sideways on a phone.

Fredle speaks every word it asks for.

Words like laugh, whisper, angrily, announcer and joyful used to trace in silence when a child
asked to be shown one. The voice that records them was reading those words as instructions on how
to speak rather than words to say, so they came back empty or acted out, and 350 of them had been
written off as words the voice simply could not manage. Asked a different way, every single one of
them says itself perfectly well.

Go Premium now opens the plans straight away in the app, with no sign-up step first.

One road out of the free goes. The strip along the bottom and the daily wall both offer Premium now, and tapping it opens the plans with the prices on them instead of a sign-in form. Signing in is not part of buying: the account arrives with the subscription.

If you already subscribe and you are on a new device, "Already a member? Sign in" sits under the plans.

Premium on the web now starts with 7 days free, the same as in the app stores.

Read the Clock now fits a small phone: two of its four answers used to sit behind the 'free goes left' strip, so a child had to scroll to see what they could choose. Every game now sizes its picture to the space the screen really leaves — Find the Frog, Name the Flower, Doggies, Kitties and Dinos keep their answers and their how-to line in view too.

The front page is now a games page. Every game in the suite is there, grouped by what it teaches — Popular, Phonics and Spelling, Numbers, Calming, Knowledge, Art, Logic and Languages — with the row of buttons at the top to show one group at a time.

Tick or Fix has moved to a page of its own. Old links to it still work.

The game menu is now grouped by what a game teaches: Phonics and Spelling, Numbers, Calming, Knowledge, Art, Logic and Languages. Whichever game your child is in, the same headings are there when you go looking for the next one.

Kitty Jigsaw sits under Calming now, with the rainbow and the cake, and its stars collect a Jigsaw badge of their own rather than counting towards Animals.

Fred Sort has been retired and is no longer in the menu.

The games page no longer marks which games are Premium; the tags are gone from the cards.

You no longer need an account to play on the web: every child gets nine free goes a day, signed in or not. Sign in when you want their stars kept on every device.

You stay signed in while you play. Your account no longer signs itself out after a month.

Still calm, still ad-free.

### 1.14 — 2026-09-17

Fredle and Tick or Fix no longer ask a child to sound out words that cannot be sounded out. Fourteen words Read Write Inc teaches by sight, why and here and mother among them, were being offered as ones to decode. They are still there to find, and still count.

Fredle now counts the tricky words.

Words like great, world, music and talk have never scored, at any age. They sit on the list of
words the phonics scheme cannot sound out, and the game treated that whole list as bonus, so a
Year 6 child was losing credit for roughly one word in eight on every board.

Most of those words are not tricky at all. Only about seventy of them are the exception words a
teacher actually teaches by heart; the rest are ordinary words that simply need a spelling
pattern the early phonics sets do not cover. Each one now arrives in the school year the
curriculum teaches it. A Reception child still meets only the small named handful, and older
children get the rest as they go.

Still calm, still ad-free.

### 1.13 — 2026-09-16

Spell Duel now matches your child's school year. It threw the same words at everyone, so a five-year-old on a winning run ended up spelling "strawberry" on a blank keyboard. Now a Reception child only gets words their class can sound out, and words like "chocolate" wait for the year children learn whole words by sight.

In the spelling games you can now tap a letter to put it in the word as well as drag it, and drag placed letters to fix the order.

Stuck on a word in Tick or Fix? Tap New word under the board for a different one. It gives nothing away about the word it drops.

Changing the school year on Fredle now redraws the board cleanly. The letter grid changes shape with the year, and rebuilding it in place could leave the found-words list drawn underneath the tiles. It waits until you close the year sheet, so you can still read what that year teaches first.

Find the Frog is a spelling game now, once your child is reading. Reception still taps the word; from Year 1 they spell it. The five position words stay the same, because they are what the game is for, but the help does not: letters laid out at first, then mixed with wrong ones, and by the end just a keyboard.

Fixed a blank screen that could cover a game and refuse to go away. If you signed in while we were changing the welcome flow, the app could come back to a step that no longer existed and show an empty sheet with no button, on every page. It now carries on to the game list.

Flagle now says the country out loud. Tap the right flag and it names the country; tap a wrong one and it names the one you picked, so a guess still teaches a flag. Flagle is for children who cannot read yet, and the name is the whole lesson.

Fredle now says the word your child just found, out loud, as it pops up. The rhyme card that used to interrupt the game is gone.

Fredle now sounds words out in a British voice for children in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and Singapore. Words like car and bird used to come back with an American r in them.

Fredle sounds out 700 more words, and says a few of them right that it used to get wrong. Village and image were sounded out with a long vowel, as vill-ayge, and now use the short one.

In Find the Frog, the frog now hides properly. He used to float clear above the car when he was meant to be behind it, so a child who read the picture correctly could still be marked wrong.

Kitty Jigsaw: dragging a piece no longer wakes your phone's back or home gesture. Pieces sat on the very edge, where a sideways drag is what Android uses to go back, so one could drop mid-move. They now sit clear of both edges.

Menus and pop-ups now hold the game still. Opening the games menu, settings, the year picker or a picture zoom used to leave the page free to scroll underneath, so a stray finger slid the whole board away behind it.

Spell Duel plays in a shorter frame: the sky above the throw was mostly empty, so the arena lost about a hundred pixels. Three picture words left the game too, because a pool, a road and a beach are places rather than things a child can name.

New game: Spelldle, now in the games menu for everyone. Guess the hidden word in six goes. The word length and the words themselves come from your child's school year.

The games menu is now sorted into sections: Phonics, Maths, Languages, Nature, Geography, Art, Making things and Games. Finding the game you want no longer means reading the whole list.

The games menu keeps the youngest games together now. Past Year 2, ABC Gap, b or d, Fred Sort and Find the Frog move to a "For younger children" section at the foot, so what they are working on sits at the top. Nothing is removed.

The puzzle board now stays put while you scroll. On a phone, scrolling the list of words you have found used to make the grid grow and shrink under your finger, as the browser's toolbar slid away. Fredle, Sumdle, Flagle, Kitty Jigsaw and the picture games all hold their size now.

Still calm, still ad-free.

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-11-05.*