About Fred Fix
Fred Fix is a gentle, no-ads phonics spelling game for children aged 4 to 7. A picture shows what the word is, but the letters below are broken in some way. Your child works out the word and fixes the letters to earn a star — the word is never spelled out for them, so they have to do the reading themselves.
It grows with them. Early on they just add the one missing letter or take away a letter that doesn’t belong. As they get the hang of it the game steps up to swapping a wrong letter for the right one and finally reordering a whole jumble. The wrong letters start out sounding obviously different and, as your child improves, become the classic mix-ups — b/d, m/n, and the short vowels e/i/a/o/u — so they’re really listening to the sounds.
How to play
- Look at the picture and sound out the word it shows.
- Add: drag the missing letter into the empty box.
- Take away: drag the letter that doesn’t belong out of the word.
- Swap: drag the right letter on top of the wrong one.
- Reorder: drag the jumbled letters into the right order.
- Get it right and the letters turn green — you win a star, and the game nudges a little harder. Find it tricky and it eases back. The hardest puzzles drop the picture too, so it’s pure sounding-out.
Use the settings cog to choose Set 1, 2 or 3 (which words appear) and the difficulty — leave it on Auto to grow with your child, or pin a single kind of fix.
Why fixing words helps with phonics
Reading is blending sounds together; spelling is the same skill in reverse. Spotting a wrong letter, choosing the right sound and ordering letters all practise segmenting — a core part of the phonics screening check — in a calm, playful way. There are no timers, no streaks and no flashing rewards: just a word, some letters and a little star when it clicks.