Reading should feel like recess.

Playtime Phonetics started with my friend Kyle Hammond, who spent this past summer teaching reading and language skills to kids from every background you can imagine — kids who show up already convinced that reading is hard, that new words are the enemy, and that none of it is for them. Kyle is working toward his master’s in childhood education, and the approach behind Playtime Phonetics grew out of a study he did on how kids actually learn to read.

Kyle also went to a monastery school, where he learned more Latin than any kid thinks they’ll ever need. It turned out to be the secret weapon: once you can see the roots inside a word, the biggest, scariest vocabulary falls apart into friendly little pieces. Reading stops being a wall and starts being a set of building blocks.

When I had my meeting with Kyle, I instantly thought this was something that could truly help kids on their education journey, and we started throwing ideas at the wall. I handle the coding and architecture of the website, and we tailor our content with strict guidelines, built for pure education purposes.

Building blocks — that’s the whole idea, right down to the logo. The plan is simple to say and hard to do: take real phonics and real Latin roots, the same curriculum any teacher would recognise, and wrap them in characters and stories kids actually want to spend time with. Keep the rigor. Lose the dread.

Kids learn to read sitting next to characters they love — that’s the whole bet. Playtime Phonetics is our swing at building that kind of company for a new generation of learners: penguins, sea lions, polar bears, and Caboose — one enormous, gentle orca who cannot hold onto the ends of his own words.

— Kyle Hammond & FRNK.