Duolingo is launching an iOS app to teach young kids how to read

Duolingo is launching a new iOS app on Thursday that is designed to teach young children how to read English. The app, called Duolingo ABC, uses short lessons made to help teach the alphabet, phonics, and sight words to kids ages three through six. The company says Duolingo ABC has more than 300 lessons. Kids will be asked to perform tasks like spell a given word from a jumble of letters, trace the outline of a capitalized or lowercase letter, trace their names, tap objects that start with a certain letter, and tap a specific word in a sentence.

You can get an idea of what some of the games look like in the screenshots in the below gallery: At launch, Duolingo ABC will be available in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. Right now, it will only be available for iOS, but the company says it plans to release an Android version at some point in the future. Duolingo ABC will be free and won’t have any ads or in-app purchases, the company says. Update, March 26th, 11:20AM ET: Added App Store link.