4.2
Where to Buy

Bud’s Rhyming Words App Review

App Info

Price: $3.99

Overview

Bud’s Rhyming Words offers three practice games to help beginning readers learn to recognize rhymes and word families. The games are increasingly complex, providing new challenges and new words to explore.

Features include:

  • Three games with increasing complexity
  • Focus on word families at the lower levels
  • Records kept for multiple students
  • Wide range of vocabulary used
  • Challenge level using rhyming words with different spellings

Quality

Bud’s Rhyming Words is a fun app that will help children master concepts related to word families and rhyming. However, there are some rough edges that users should be aware of. Some of the links in the app (the privacy policy and the link to purchase another app in the series) appear to be broken. Some of the pictures are difficult to name, such as “tide” that shows a large wave suitable for surfing, and “yen” showing a Chinese character. On the “Catch the Match” game (hard level), several key words are not voiced, including smile, these, third, sport, much and true. Instead, a popping sound is played, both in the beginning of the activity and at the end when the narrator says “_____ rhymes with…” and lists the rhyming words located. There was no picture for the word “ice” in the Pick and Click section. Developers should find and fix these glitches, as they detract from the app.

Education

Bud’s Rhyming Words is very comprehensive in its treatment of rhyming and word families. Beginning with simple activities focused on basic word families and progressing through increasingly complex exercises to finding rhymes with different spelling patterns is a great way to help young readers explore these phonics and word attack concepts. The Word Families activity is first, where users can see and hear words in the chosen family, then match pictures. All of the words at this level are part of the same family. The “Pick and Click” level announces a key word and challenges users to find the one rhyme from a choice of six pictures. The “Catch and Match” activity offers three levels of complexity, ranging from easy and medium that use the words previously introduced to the hard level that contains unique words that rhyme but do not belong to the same word family. This level also includes distractors with similar spelling but differing pronunciation, such as “blow” and “now.” It’s an excellent ending activity that will challenge even experienced learners.

The one concern is that there is no apparent way to repeat the key word if the user did not hear it in the first place, and no way to discover what the pictures might be without choosing incorrectly. One possible solution would be to set up a two-click system, where the first touch of the screen would say the word out loud and the second would choose it. As is, many users will find it frustrating if they cannot identify a given picture or if they misidentify a picture.

Entertainment

Bud’s Rhyming Words is a pleasant app. Correct answers are rewarded with random verbal praises, and if a student happens to choose an incorrect response, the prompt is to “keep trying” or similar message. The first two levels use falling confetti to reward completion of an exercise, which could get a bit boring after a few rounds. The “Catch and Match” level is animated and requires the user to use arrow buttons to move the diver up and down to catch the desired word on one of three levels. This is a bit challenging to do without accidentally catching an incorrect word along the way, which takes away accuracy points. Spacing the words more widely might help with this problem. The final reward at this level is a picture of a treasure chest, which may not be too thrilling for young users. Developers may want to consider adding some animations or perhaps even opening up a brief game section to reward completion of the levels.

Value

This app is a good value for students who need extra practice on rhyming or word families. It is very focused and simple to use, so it would be perfect for special needs students. It also provides a lot of practice on the skill, which is a real plus. If you are looking for a way to practice just the skills related to word families and rhyming without a lot of distractions, it’s a good choice. However, if your student needs more comprehensive skills practice without such a defined focus, there are other apps in this price range that offer practice with more skills.

Child Friendliness

Bud’s Rhyming Words does not contain any outside advertising or links to social media. There is a Parents’ Section protected by a mechanism that requires pressing and holding a lock icon. This section contains information about the importance of the skills and directions to play each of the games. There are links to the App Store, the privacy policy, and to sign up for the developers’ mailing list. A button on the home page promises “More Games,” but is protected by the same mechanism as the Parents’ Section. Once inside, the link to the App Store did not seem to be working.

However, there are unprotected accesses to an email link in several places in this app. Each time a level is completed, and whenever a student presses the prize cup icon on the upper right corner, a scorecard is displayed with a button to email it to a teacher. Pressing the email button opens an email with blank address, and the score card in the body of the message. This should not be accessible to students, but should be protected in some fashion.

Bud’s Rhyming Words
Bud's Rhyming Words
Bud’s Rhyming Words gives beginning readers a great introduction to word family and rhyming concepts.
Quality
Education
Entertainment
Value
Child Friendly
4.2
Where to Buy