ActivitiesWhat this drill is
Two words, one judgement: were they the same, or were they different? Then the child says one of them.
Same-or-different is the discrimination task that sits underneath minimal pairs. Half the trials are the same word twice, so "different" is not the safe answer, and the child has to actually listen rather than learn the drill.
It ends in production anyway: after the judgement the child says the second word, so a listening drill still leaves you with articulation data.
How the turn works
Buddy takes the first turn every time: he says the word, and where the deck has a target sound he adds the cue for it. Then the banner flips to YOUR TURN, the mic orb starts pulsing, and he listens. What he hears decides what happens next — the target moves the drill on, a different word gets a warm reaction and a re-model, any voice at all gets credit, and silence gets hints rather than a stall. There is a green button on every card for a child who is not using a mic, and it is a first-class path, not a fallback.
The data you walk away with
The trial log runs beside the drill. Every turn lands as got it, almost or cue given; the listening result suggests the mark so a parent running this alone still gets data, and one tap changes it. Little Words does not do automated phoneme scoring — the adult in the room is the judge, and the export records which marks were suggested and which were yours. At the end you get a short summary with counts, an accuracy percent and the words worth another look, plus CSV, print and copy-to-clipboard. Everything stays on the device.
The pairs in this drill
- top / chop
- cat / catch
Try next
Little Words activities are practice materials, not an assessment or a diagnosis. If you have a concern about a child's speech, a licensed speech-language pathologist is the person to ask.