An English Reading App for Non-Native Speaking Kids, Wherever They Are Starting From
Word Safari builds real English reading skill for a child who is still learning the language, while the same account keeps German or Russian going too, so a new school or a new country doesn't have to mean losing the language spoken at home.
English content spans ages 4 to 11 across 7 phonics tiers. It doesn't assume a starting point either, some children arrive already speaking English, others are meeting it for the first time.
A different starting point, not a different kind of child
Families land on this question from a lot of different places, and Word Safari doesn't need to know which one describes yours before it starts.
Maybe your child has picked up spoken English quickly at a new school but has never learned to read it. Maybe you're preparing for a move to an English-speaking country and would like reading sorted out in advance. Maybe English is the language of the classroom while a different one runs at home, and you'd like both to keep growing rather than one crowding out the other.
A short placement round finds a genuine starting tier in English reading, whatever that turns out to be for your particular child, and the game keeps adjusting from there as they play.
English deep, home language kept
The same game that teaches English reading also runs in German and Russian, each tracked as its own, separate progress.
Word Safari's deepest track is English: 1,347 hand-curated words across 7 phonics tiers, 36 decodable stories, and a full set of game modes, built to carry a child from a first letter sound through to sentence-level reading. That's the track most non-native speaking kids need to spend real time in.
Alongside it, the same account plays in German and Russian too. Add whichever one is spoken at home from an existing kid profile, no separate sign-up and no extra account. Each language keeps its own placement and its own level, so a child well into English's higher tiers can be just starting in German or Russian, and neither number pulls at the other.
That matters because the goal here usually isn't three equally deep tracks. It's English built up properly, without a home language quietly falling away because there was never a place for it to keep going. A family that wants German or Russian built up to the same depth as English, on equal footing, may prefer our bilingual family reading page; a family already running all three languages together will find more detail on our trilingual app page.
Placement finds where English reading actually starts
A short, playful placement round finds a real starting tier without assuming your child's age tells you where to begin.
For a lot of children, age is a fair guess at reading level. For a non-native speaking child, it usually isn't. A ten year old who has never seen written English before might genuinely need to start at the very first phonics tier, the same place a much younger native speaker would. A seven year old who has been hearing English at school for a year might already read past where their age would suggest. Word Safari's placement is built to find whichever of these is actually true, in a few minutes of play, rather than start everyone at the same point or lock a level to a birth year.
From there, every round keeps adjusting. If the first estimate lands slightly off, ordinary play corrects it, so you're never stuck waiting on a formal re-test to fix a wrong guess. For more on how a placement round actually works, see our full reading placement test page.
What's inside the English track
None of this is vocabulary drilling. Every story is fully decodable, built only from sounds your child has already been taught, so reading feels like genuine sounding-out rather than guessing at a shape.
Hand-curated across 7 phonics tiers, from first sounds to Year 6 vocabulary.
Little books that only use words your child can already sound out.
A ladder from first letter sounds through blends, digraphs and sentences.
Nine reading modes and three spelling modes, introduced gradually as they play.
One account for every child in the family, wherever each one is
Expat families often have more than one child, and each one can be starting from somewhere completely different. An older sibling might have grown up mostly around English already, while a younger one just arrived and is meeting written English for the first time. Word Safari keeps a separate kid profile for each child, with its own placement and its own progress in every language it plays, so one child's harder stories never spill into a younger one's turn, and neither child is measured against the other.
See where your child's English reading actually stands
Sign up free and let a short placement find their real starting tier, in English or in German or Russian.
Prefer to see it first? Try a round on the homepage demo →
Built for a family that's still finding its feet
A house move, a new SIM card, a school that hasn't set up wifi yet, none of that should stand between your child and a round of practice.
Questions parents ask
My child already speaks some English, will placement start them too low?
Placement measures reading, not spoken fluency, so a child who talks confidently but hasn't learned to read English yet still gets a genuine reading assessment. That can look quite different from their spoken level, and the game adjusts quickly from there.
Does my child need to know any English before starting?
No. The earliest phonics tier starts at first letter sounds, the same entry point as any beginning reader, so a child meeting written English for the first time has a real place to start.
Will my child lose their home language while they focus on English?
No. Add German or Russian from the same kid profile, and it keeps its own placement and its own progress, tracked separately from English. Nothing about building up English requires dropping the other language.
We just arrived and haven't sorted out home internet yet, is this a good fit right away?
Yes. Once a round has loaded, it plays fully offline, so patchy hotel wifi or a SIM card that hasn't arrived yet doesn't stop practice. Sign-up only needs an email address, no card, ever.