PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES vs Reading Mountain
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES
This app helps young children develop crucial pre-reading skills by focusing on phonemic awareness. Through interactive games, children learn to identify and distinguish the initial sounds of words, building a strong foundation for literacy.
- Develops phonemic awareness
- Focuses on beginning word sounds
- Interactive sound-matching games
- Builds foundational reading skills
- Prepares for alphabet learning
- Includes mini-games
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PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES will help give your child phonemic awareness skills. Research shows that phonemic awareness is a powerful predictor of success for learning how to read (Stanovich, 1986; 1993; Share & Stanovich, 1995). PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES will help prepare your child to read by helping your child learn the primary sounds of the letters of the alphabet. PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES gives a solid foundation for your child to learn the alphabetic principle. PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES will help your child identify the beginning sounds of words. PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES will help your child understand that words are made up of sound units (phonemes). Children with high phonemic awareness outperformed those with low phonemic awareness on all literacy measures, whether they were taught using a traditional basal instruction or whole language (Griffith, Klesius, & Kromrey, 1992). The purpose of PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES is to help build foundational reading skills for your child. This app helps your child develop their ability to listen for and discern sounds at the beginnings of words. An example of this would be the child recognizing that the /b/ sound is at the beginning of the words ball, bat, and balloon. By practicing and mastering the games in this app, your child can develop neural pathways in their brain relating to sound recognition. When your child is introduced to the printed letters, your child will already recognize the primary sound each letter makes. This will make learning the alphabet easier than if no phonemic instruction were given to your child. This app focuses on helping children develop pre-letter skills of phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is an often overlooked or neglected skill that can significantly benefit early childhood reading skills. Many children are not given the much-needed explicit instruction of the SOUNDS that the letters make. In this app, only the SOUNDS of the letters are used and NEVER the letters or the names of the letters. This app is dedicated to helping children learn the sounds and function of letters. The app has 2 games where children match images that begin with the same sound. Another game has children eliminating the image with the beginning sound that does not match the others. In the final game, children analyze two images and determine whether or not these two images begin with the same sound. There are 6 mini-games that pop up throughout the game randomly after 20 points have been achieved on the counter. This app can help your child develop strong phonemic awareness skills while they are having fun playing games.
Reading Mountain
This app builds foundational reading skills by focusing on phonemic awareness through interactive sound manipulation activities. It helps early and struggling readers, including those with dyslexia, to hear, segment, and blend sounds in words, creating a strong base for literacy.
- Break words into sounds
- Find specific sounds
- Blend sounds to form words
- Swap sounds to create new words
- Interactive sound manipulation activities
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Break, Find, Blend, and Swap Sounds to Build Reading Skills! Give your student a strong foundation for reading with this engaging phonemic awareness app! Instead of focusing on letters, the app uses sound tiles to help students hear and manipulate sounds, making early reading development fun and effective. Research has shown that phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize and work with sounds in words—is an essential foundational skill for reading and spelling. This app guides learners through interactive activities designed to strengthen their ability to hear, segment, and manipulate sounds in words, laying the foundation for decoding skills. Key Features: - Break words into individual sounds - Find specific sounds in a word - Blend sounds together to form words - Swap sounds to create new words Designed for early and struggling readers and students with dyslexia of all ages, this app makes phonemic awareness engaging and effective. Start building a strong base for reading success today!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Reading Mountain at 5.0 against PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES's 4.5. Reading Mountain also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1). PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES's advantage is ratings volume (400 vs 2) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 6 months). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Reading Mountain asks for nothing beyond the download.
Reading Mountain holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES has 400 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES ships an update every 2 months, Reading Mountain every 6 months. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES | Reading Mountain |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (400 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | 400 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 12.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 329 MB | 40 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | PRESCHOOL UNIVERSITY | LEARN MOUNTAIN LLC |
In-app purchases
PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES
- Phonemic Awareness Full$1.99
Reading Mountain
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES free?
Is Reading Mountain free?
Which has better reviews, PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES or Reading Mountain?
Do PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES or Reading Mountain have ads?
Which is updated more often, PHONEMIC AWARENESS BUBBLES or Reading Mountain?
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