🎈 TapaType → Heart words
Heart Words & Magic 100 Words — practise them by typing! 💛
If your child has come home from school with a list of heart words, Magic 100 words (M100W) or Oxford word list words to learn, you know the routine: read them, say them, spell them… every single day. TapaType turns that practice into a game — kids hear each word spoken aloud, then type it letter by letter, earning stars, stickers and cheers as they go.
▶ Play School Words — freeWhat are heart words?
Heart words are the high-frequency words children are taught to know "by heart" in structured literacy programmes used across New Zealand and Australian schools. Many can't be fully sounded out (like the or was), so kids need to recognise and spell them automatically. The first 100 high-frequency words make up about half of everything children read and write.
The words in the game
Level 1 — first heart words (Foundation / Year 1):
Level 2 — next set (Year 1–2):
Level 3 — trickier words (Year 2–3):
These sets draw from the NZ structured-literacy heart word sequence and the Australian Magic 100 Words and Oxford Wordlist — the lists used in the vast majority of primary classrooms in both countries.
Why typing helps
- Multi-sensory: hearing the word, seeing it, and pressing each letter engages more memory pathways than flashcards alone
- Letter-by-letter attention: typing forces kids to process every letter in order — exactly what spelling needs
- Instant feedback: a wrong key gently shakes; the right key advances — no frustration, no red pen
- Kids ask to practise: stars, stickers and a cheering voice do what nagging can't
More than heart words
TapaType has 14 free games for ages 3–8: phonics word families (cat/hat/mat), counting and times tables, letter tracing, sentence typing and more — with real recorded voices in NZ, Australian and US accents. It works on laptops and tablets, installs like an app, and runs offline. There are no ads and no data collection (privacy policy).
▶ Start practising — it's freeMore practice pages: phonics & CVC word families · letter tracing · skip counting & times tables