Can kids learn to read with AI?

By Jordan Urbs · Updated August 2026

It started with bedtime books.

My son and I make picture books together with AI — a gecko gets into trouble, we write it down, the machine draws it, and the books end up on glasspals.com for other people's bedtimes. It's the most fun I've ever had building anything.

So the books grew a sibling: Read with Glass, a phonics game. Letter sounds first, then blending them into words, then little stories made only of words a kid can already sound out.

It's free. No ads. No account. English and Spanish, a toggle right on the first screen. It runs in the browser, and progress stays on that device.

(There's a second game too: glasspals.com/play/, for when the reading one feels too much like homework.)

What did the AI actually do?

"I built it with AI" can mean anything these days. So, the precise split:

I built the machinery; my son is the creative director. The AI did the typing. (Cheap labor, that.)

The letter-sound order, the blending progression, which words show up when: that's the human-chosen part, the same phonics-first approach every decent reading program uses. The code, the art, the fifty small fixes after my son found fifty small ways to break it... that's where the machine earned its keep.

Is it safe for kids?

Yes, and I'd rather show you than reassure you: no account, no ads, no chatbot, no tracking of your kid. Nothing they do in the game leaves the device... not even to me.

It's letters and sounds, not a conversation. There's nothing in it that can talk back.

What did it cost?

For you: nothing. It's free because I own it — there's no company behind it, no investors, no growth targets, nobody to answer to if it doesn't "convert."

(There IS a club page for parents who want to support the project... but it isn't open yet. The buttons don't even work.)

For me: the evenings.

Can AI teach a kid to read?

Honestly? No. And I say that as the guy who built one.

AI built the tool. My son and I do the reading. The game holds the drill; I sit next to him; he decides it's worth figuring out. Machine drills, human decides. That split is the whole design.

When should kids learn to read?

I don't know, and I'm not a reading teacher. Every kid is different, and anyone who gives you a single number is selling something.

What I can tell you is what we did: followed the sounds when he was curious about letters, and kept it short enough that he asked to play again tomorrow.