Ivy Street Blog
Ivy Street has two main sides. Word Garden is best used by caretakers of children under 8 who are still learning to read. The bookshelf side helps readers browse public booklists, organize personal booklists, and save books to a private reading list.
A simple and fun way to use Word Garden is to do a word of the day. The words were chosen to build the kind of academic vocabulary children will need in school, and a good place to begin is often with words that share the same first letter as the child's name.
The app is mobile friendly, so it works well for quick practice, checklists, and book browsing on a phone. Booklists are meant as recommendations for readers, but parental supervision is still advised when choosing books for children.
Word Garden helps an adult guide one word at a time through sound, meaning, spelling, and related ideas. It is designed to be used with the child, not handed to the child as a self-use app.
The three-step flow is straightforward: start at the Sound Table, open a Word Cloud, then work through the single-word checklist and printable worksheet.
Because the checklist system saves progress and supports a current word, it works well for short daily practice sessions.
The bookshelf side of Ivy Street is for organizing your own collection, building booklists, discovering public booklists, and saving quick finds to your reading list.
My Bookshelf is where you create and manage your own booklists. The Public Bookshelf helps you discover lists from other users. The Reading List is your private save-for-later space.
If you are choosing books for children, use these lists as starting-point recommendations and review selections with parental judgment.
Pick one word, work the checklist together, and stop. That is enough. A short word-of-the-day routine is often easier to sustain than trying to do too much at once.
Starting with words that share the same first letter as the child's name can make the practice set feel more personal and memorable.
Ivy Street is designed to be practical on desktop and mobile, so you can check a word, reopen a checklist, or browse a list of books without needing a full workstation.
Whether you are teaching a word in a spare minute or saving books to revisit later, the app is meant to support short, repeatable routines.