A Cambridge Primary Stage 1 practice app for Year 1 reading
For a child moving from Reception into Year 1, Word Safari's practice steps up to match Cambridge Primary Stage 1: more sounds, longer words, real stories.
Built for ages 4 to 11. This page covers Year 1 / Cambridge Primary Stage 1 specifically; the placement play finds this stage automatically if that's where your child already is. Aligned to, not an official product of, Cambridge.
What Stage 1 practice actually contains
By Cambridge Primary Stage 1, a child is expected to move past single sounds and simple three-letter words into consonant digraphs and early consonant blends.
Word Safari's content at this level is drawn from the same shared bank as every other stage: 73 letter sounds and 1,347 words across the app's seven tiers, with the Stage-1-appropriate slice built from digraphs (two letters, one sound, like sh or ch) and CCVC/CVCC blends at the start and end of words, rather than pure CVC words. That slice moves a Year 1 reader on from where Reception left off, without skipping ahead into content they are not ready for yet.
Decodable stories at this level only use words built from sounds already introduced, so a Year 1 reader is stretching into new blends without ever hitting a word they have no tools to attack. Across all seven tiers the app holds 36 decodable stories in total, and the 12 game modes, nine for reading and three for spelling, rotate through a Stage 1 session so digraph and blend practice does not feel like the same worksheet twice.
What fills a Stage 1 session
Real counts from the app's own content, not marketing round numbers.
Across 7 phonics tiers; Stage 1 draws on the digraph and blend slice of that bank.
Including the consonant digraphs a Year 1 reader is meeting for the first time.
Built only from sounds already taught, so no word is an unfair guess.
Nine reading games and three spelling modes, rotating so practice stays varied.
Stage 1 is one rung, not the whole staircase
Word Safari does not stop at Stage 1. The same seven-tier ladder keeps climbing through Years 2 to 5 up to Cambridge Primary Stage 6, so a child who masters this stage moves on inside the same app rather than needing to be handed off to something else. If your child is a little older, see the practice built for 6 to 7 year olds, or read the full Cambridge Primary ladder end to end.
Not just "Year 1 phonics"
A generic Year 1 phonics app
Usually built around a single country's own national curriculum age-bands, without reference to any particular international framework.
Word Safari at Stage 1
Named against the actual Cambridge Primary stage, so a family following that framework can match content to the exact stage their child is placed at, not just an approximate age.
See it before you commit to anything
No card, no sign-up wall. Play a real round right now.
Built to be safe to hand a child
The same three things are true on every page of Word Safari.
Questions parents ask
How do I know my child is at Stage 1 and not still Early Years B?
The placement play answers this in about two minutes by trying a short run of sounds and words and finding where a child starts to struggle, which is a more reliable signal than age alone. You can also see and adjust the stage from their profile at any time.
Does the app follow Cambridge's own syllabus order exactly?
It is aligned to the stage, not identical to a syllabus document. Word Safari's own tier order is built around proven phonics sequencing, and it maps onto Stage 1 in what a child is practising, but it is an independent app's own content, not a Cambridge or CambriLearn curriculum.