A custom-built spelling game. Two grade levels of progress in three months.
How Kelly Vanderbeek built the app her son needed, with his help.
The Challenge
“A love for learning, I think, is the most important thing,” says Kelly Vanderbeek, a mother of three who homeschools her children.
But the approach that worked for two of her kids wasn’t working for her 13-year-old son, Silas. During one reading lesson, they both ended up in tears.
“Mom, you don’t understand. The letters are all over the paper.”
Kelly knew they needed something different. The spelling apps she found felt too young for him. She wanted a way to help Silas learn without making him feel small.
Why Replit
“There’s got to be another way,” Kelly remembers thinking. “I found it, and it felt like a breath of fresh air.”
With Replit, Kelly could describe what she wanted to build in her own words. She didn’t need a technical background to get started.
“When I started talking to it, it was like, yeah, I got you. It’s just so exciting to be able to, like, create at your fingertips.”
Instead of trying to fit Silas into another app, Kelly could make something with him.
Building with Replit
Kelly built Spell Strike, a game that helps kids learn to spell. Silas helped shape it from the start.
“Silas was very much a part of the process,” she says. “Well, I like to play video games, let’s make it into a game.”
His feedback helped guide the details, too. A letter feedback tile came from his need to see how he was doing.
“He was like, I need to know what I’m getting right and what I’m getting wrong.”
Together, they were building around how Silas wanted to learn, with his ideas becoming part of the experience.
Value Realized
Kelly saw a change in Silas’s confidence after he started using Spell Strike.
“I feel like Spell Strike did give him the ability to believe in himself again.”
For Kelly, what began as a way to help her son also opened up the possibility of helping other families.
“How incredible is that, to be able to build something that can help so many people?”
And she’s already thinking about what comes next: “I have all these ideas, and I can do them now.”
Start building today.
Join the companies and creators shipping the next generation of software with Replit.