About Spanish Sounds — listen and tap the picture
Spanish Sounds is a no-ads Spanish listening game for children aged 4 to 7. A play button sits in the middle of a 3×3 grid — tap it and a native Spanish voice says a word like gato, manzana or mariposa. Eight photos surround the button. Your child taps the photo that matches what they just heard.
Spanish Sounds joins the Tadpole Games family alongside Fredle (phonics), Sumdle (numbers), Flagle (geography), Flower Match and Name the Flower. It’s designed to be played before a child can read in any language.
Who Spanish Sounds is for
- Reception & Year 1 (age 4–6) — first exposure to Spanish. The audio does the teaching; the photo confirms the meaning. No reading required.
- Year 2–3 (age 6–8) — building vocabulary in their first foreign language. Hearing a native voice over and over is exactly how vocabulary sticks.
- Bilingual households where one parent wants to share Spanish words without sounding like Google Translate.
- Home-schoolers and KS1 tutors looking for a short, audio-led MFL warm-up.
How it works
- A play button sits in the middle of a 3×3 grid.
- Eight photos sit in the cells around it — a cat, a banana, a tree, a moon …
- Tap the play button and a Spanish word is spoken aloud — e.g. gato.
- Your child taps the photo that matches the word.
- Right answer? Green flash, a star is added, the round resets with a new word.
- Wrong answer? The tile wobbles red, the audio button stays put, your child can tap play again to listen once more, then try again. Endless turns — no losing.
Why audio, not written words
Young children learn a language the same way they learnt their first one: by hearing it, attaching it to a thing they can see, and repeating. Spanish Sounds is built around that fact. The word never appears written down on the playing cells — only spoken. That sidesteps the trap of children silently reading Spanish in English phonics and arriving at the wrong sound.
The voice is Mónica — Apple’s native Castilian Spanish voice, the same one Siri uses in Spain. It’s a real native pronunciation, not a generic low-quality TTS, so your child hears Spanish vowels and consonants exactly as a native speaker would say them.
How to play with your child
- Say the word back. “Gato means cat. Can you say gato?” Repetition out loud is most of the learning.
- Tap the play button twice. Listening to the same word twice in a row before answering helps your child catch the sounds.
- Talk about the picture in English too. “A butterfly is called mariposa in Spanish.” The English bridge is fine for a 4-year-old — you’ll drop it later.
- Five minutes a day. Short and warm beats long and earnest. Stars only go up.
Frequently asked questions
Can my child fail?
No. There is no timer, no lives, and no fail state. A wrong tap just gives a gentle wobble, and your child can tap the play button to hear the word again as many times as they like.
Which words does Spanish Sounds cover?
Spanish Sounds has forty common Spanish nouns across five difficulty tiers, in the same gentle progression style as Sumdle and Flagle. Your child starts with eight farm and pet animals and unlocks more as they earn stars:
- Tier 1 — from the first round. Eight animals: gato (cat), perro (dog), vaca (cow), caballo (horse), pollo (chicken), pato (duck), cerdo (pig), oveja (sheep).
- Tier 2 — unlocks at 5 stars. Eight foods: manzana (apple), plátano (banana), naranja (orange), fresa (strawberry), pan (bread), queso (cheese), huevo (egg), helado (ice cream).
- Tier 3 — unlocks at 15 stars. Eight outdoors words: sol (sun), luna (moon), árbol (tree), flor (flower), montaña (mountain), playa (beach), río (river), nube (cloud).
- Tier 4 — unlocks at 35 stars. Eight everyday things: casa (house), mesa (table), silla (chair), cama (bed), libro (book), coche (car), bicicleta (bicycle), zapato (shoe).
- Tier 5 — unlocks at 70 stars. Eight bigger animals: león (lion), tigre (tiger), elefante (elephant), jirafa (giraffe), oso (bear), mono (monkey), conejo (rabbit), mariposa (butterfly).
Each new tier comes with a small celebration so your child knows new words have appeared. Stars only go up — the tiers do not reset on a wrong answer.
What accent does the voice have?
Castilian Spanish — Apple’s Mónica voice, which is the standard variety taught in UK schools and what BBC Bitesize uses. Your child will hear the th-sound for “ce/ci/z” (e.g. cerdo) that distinguishes Spain Spanish from Latin American Spanish.
What if my child can’t read?
Perfect — Spanish Sounds is built for them. The question is audio, the answers are photos, and there are no written Spanish words on the playing cells.
Does it need internet?
Once the page has loaded, no — the photos and the audio are all loaded up front. Add it to your home screen for an app-like experience.
More from Tadpole Games
- Fredle — a daily phonics word puzzle for UK children aged 4 to 7.
- Sumdle — trace two digits and an operator across a mixed grid to make a number.
- Flagle — spot the country from its most famous landmark.
- Flower Match — drag each flower across to its leaf.
Photo credits
Spanish Sounds’s forty photographs are from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 or compatible free-culture licences. The Spanish voice is Mónica, Apple’s built-in Castilian Spanish text-to-speech voice. The sol illustration is rendered locally.