I'm going to NYC this weekend for Research ED! Anyone else going to be there?

Had a great time at the Virginia Reading League Conference today! Hope we can do it again soon! @thereadingleagueva.bsky.social

Last night I gave a talk about how we can create our customizable games! Thanks to LearnUp Centers for hosting and publishing the recording. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRG...

LearnUp Speaker Series: Julia Shayto from Phonics and Stuff

YouTube video by LearnUp Centers

youtube.com

We built a new toy. You can make any letter sequence you want and see what words you learn at each step. Come try it out! Show us your best (and worst) sequences for teaching letter sounds. phonicsandstuff.com/letter-seque...

Join us for a virtual event hosted by LearnUp Centers and Phonics & Stuff! I'll be talking about how to use the Phonics & Stuff tools to teach reading. I've broken down 30,000 words so you don't have to! Come learn how this fuels our free games and teaching tools. www.eventbrite.com/e/learnup-sp...

Explore interconnected morphemes as webs! Similar to a morpheme matrix, a morpheme web shows the variety of words that can be built with a morpheme base. We offer a handful of free ones, while members get access to over 5,000 morphemes! phonicsandstuff.com/morpheme-webs

I've had a great time the past several years. Looking forward to it again!

The Reading League@thereadingleague.org · 10mo ago

🎉 Registration for #TRLConf2026 is NOW OPEN! 📅 Sept 30–Oct 2, 2026 | Chicago Join educators, researchers, and literacy leaders for three days of evidence-aligned learning, inspiration, and connection. Secure your spot early and save your seat: https://bit.ly/4lUzmFC #LiteracyLeadership

Sold a Story fans - we've got something new! www.youtube.com/shorts/a94It...

New Sold a Story discussion guides for Episodes 11-14

YouTube video by APM Reports

youtube.com

We have a new daily puzzle! It's a fun way to learn different morphemes, but really it's just an excuse to have another word puzzle for me to play. phonicsandstuff.com/puzzles/morp...

Morpheme Mix - Phonics & Stuff

Play a daily puzzle where you mix morphemes to make words!

phonicsandstuff.com

It's been a few years, but we finally have a real home page. Plus, a new mascot. Say hello to Nibbles!

We have something new I hope you guys will like! It's a daily morphology puzzle we're calling Morpheme Mix. Every day you'll get a collection of morphemes that you combine in different ways to make words. Let us know what you think! phonicsandstuff.com/puzzles/morp...

Morpheme Mix - Phonics & Stuff

Play a daily puzzle where you mix morphemes to make words!

phonicsandstuff.com

The subtraction worksheet is available now too! Create subtraction facts worksheets from 0 to 10 for students. phonicsandstuff.com/worksheets/m...

Addition Worksheet Creator Create addition facts worksheets from 0 to 10. Why does a phonics website have math worksheets? Because we do phonics AND stuff. The stuff includes math! phonicsandstuff.com/worksheets/m...

Anyone else going to be attending? planetwordmuseum.org/events/eyes-...

Eyes on Reading: Maximizing Phonics Instruction through Differentiation with Wiley Blevins — Planet Word Museum

Planet Word is excited to announce a special evening with Wiley Blevins, one of America’s leading experts on phonics instruction, the foundational skill all beginning readers should master. Author of ...

planetwordmuseum.org

We finished re-formatting another Core Knowledge decodable. We love the high quality story and images, but think they work better when you put the stories and images on a single page. Enjoy! phonicsandstuff.com/decodables#r...

How often does the rule 'i before e' actually apply? In our database of 30k+ words, 'i before e' occurs 902 times compared to 'e before i', which occurs 226 times. However, if you look at weighted word frequencies (how often a word actually occurs in English), it's a more interesting story.

Can't wait for more of this!

Emily Hanford@ehanford.bsky.social · 2y ago

New episodes of Sold a Story are coming next week. Thursday Feb 20. youtube.com/shorts/aPe_4...

We have a new worksheet! Create 'Fill In Vowels' worksheets with customized settings. phonicsandstuff.com/worksheets/p...

We just made a new fun tool! Teaching students how to write letters correctly is critical, so we made some simple animations for use in classrooms or at home. Come try it out and let us know what you think! phonicsandstuff.com/handwriting

'Niece' and 'nephew' aren't the original English words. They were borrowed from French and supplanted native 'nift' and 'neve', direct cognates of German 'Nichte' and 'Neffe'. The French words have the same Proto-Indo-European ancestors so they're cognates too, but very distant ones. Here's more:

On our site you can use Google to sign in now, so you don't have to remember another password. If you previously made an account, you can login with Google and it'll still have all your data. We also added a reminder for which you used to login, because I forget all the time on other sites.

Cleopatra lived closer in time to 'yeet' being in the dictionary than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Renew! Time for a new year!

Solstice! Completely missed posting this last week.

Here's a delightful discussion I had about our site and ways to make it better. I really like the community that's developing on Bluesky.

boptom@boptom.bsky.social · 2y ago

Off the top of my head: Reading eggs, Teach your Monster to Read, Khan Academy Kids. Just checked out your site but couldn’t find the flash cards.

After a cosy Christmas fire, there are cinders in the fireplace, as well as ashes, which in French are called cendres. 'Cinder' and 'cendre' may look alike but they aren't etymologically related: they come from two unrelated words. However, 'cendre' did influence the spelling of 'cinder'. More:

I see academics complaining that schools are ignoring results of their research, but it might be easier if reading the papers themselves wasn't so difficult. (I almost said arduous, but Flesch wouldn't approve.) www.economist.com/science-and-...

Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all

We analyse two centuries of scholarly work

economist.com

What do guillotine and tortilla have in common? They both spell the /y/ sound as “ll” The first comes from French and the second from Spanish. phonicsandstuff.com/wordlist?wc=...

These posts delight me. It speaks to my inner word nerd.

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 2y ago

‘Deck’ in “Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly” means “to decorate.” It is not related or a shortening of ‘decorate.’ It comes from the Dutch word meaning "to cover.” You also use it when you're all "decked out."