Sound Safari
Our Story
About Sound Safari
Sound Safari began with a problem every speech-language pathologist knows: too much of the week goes to paperwork, and not enough of it to the kids on the caseload. We built the app alongside working SLPs to close that gap — one real caseload problem at a time.
So the tools answer problems clinicians actually described to us — the note that follows you home, the five apps that don't talk to each other, the homework that never makes it back from the backpack.
One belief shapes the rest: a clinical tool should be powerful enough for a full caseload and simple enough to open in your next session. No training manuals, no onboarding calls — just open the app and go.
Built with working SLPs
Sound Safari is shaped in a continuous loop with practicing school-based and private-practice SLPs who run it on real caseloads and tell us what's missing.
It's why scoring adapts to how you actually run a session — score live, score later, or score discreetly for an anxious child. It's why you can change a student's prompting level mid-session without restarting, why group sessions score each child individually, and why a homework link opens in any browser with results syncing straight back to your dashboard. When a clinician tells us a workflow is one tap too long, that's the next thing we fix.
Grounded in the research
Sound Safari's developmental guidance comes from large-scale research reviews of children's speech-sound acquisition — McLeod & Crowe (2018) and its U.S. companion, Crowe & McLeod (2020), both published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (AJSLP). Those studies set the age a sound typically emerges and its 90% mastery age The 90% mastery age is the age by which about 9 in 10 children can produce a sound — the milestone clinicians watch. — the same ages your child's SLP already works from.
Those norms run through the whole product. The built-in screener checks a child's sounds against age-based priorities, and every guide in our free Sound Library shows a sound's 50% and 90% mastery ages so you can see where a child stands. (Consonant blends and clusters don't have established single-sound norms, so we never assign them a mastery age.) And norms are one input, never a verdict — a child still working on a sound past its typical age may simply be a good candidate for a speech-language evaluation, not proof that anything is wrong.
Who Sound Safari is for
Sound Safari runs two ways from a single app, so whoever's holding the iPhone or iPad sees the tools built for them.
For SLPs and educators
A complete clinical workflow in one place — a 24-sound articulation screener, an IEP goal bank across 8 categories, probes and baselines, PDF progress reports, and on-device SOAP-note drafting — for a full caseload with no per-student fees.
For professionals arrow_forwardFor parents
Home practice that feels like play. Kids work through the sounds their SLP assigned — or ones you choose — earn streaks and Star Sounds, and you watch real per-sound accuracy climb over time.
See the parent experience arrow_forwardWhat we believe
A few principles guide every decision.
Clinicians stay in charge.
Sound Safari drafts, scores, and tracks — but you review and edit everything before it's saved or exported. You're always the clinician of record.
Your data is yours.
Session data syncs privately through your own iCloud account, and the on-device AI drafts notes right on your iPhone or iPad without sending a child's name or date of birth anywhere. For clinical settings we suggest initials or pseudonyms and strong device security; our privacy policy has the full picture, including the services that help us run subscriptions and sign-in.
Practice should feel good, not like a test.
Kids get encouragement, not pressure — and clinicians get fewer evenings lost to documentation.
Get in Touch
Questions, feedback, or a feature you wish existed? We'd love to hear from you.
Frequently asked questions
A few things people ask before they download.
Who makes Sound Safari? expand_more
Sound Safari is built by a team that works hand in hand with practicing speech-language pathologists. Its clinical features — the SOAP notes, the articulation screener, the IEP goal bank — were shaped by feedback from SLPs using the app on real caseloads, and its developmental norms come from the McLeod & Crowe (2018) and Crowe & McLeod (2020) research reviews published in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
Is Sound Safari for parents or for speech therapists? expand_more
Both. The same app runs a full clinical workflow for SLPs and educators — screening, IEP goals, progress reports, and on-device SOAP-note drafting — and a play-based home-practice experience for parents and kids. You choose your path when you set up your account. See our pages for professionals and for parents for what each includes.
What devices does Sound Safari run on? expand_more
Sound Safari runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 18 or later. Practice, scoring, and note generation all work offline, and your data syncs privately through your own iCloud account when you're online.
Is Sound Safari a substitute for a speech evaluation? expand_more
No. Sound Safari is a practice, screening, and tracking tool — not a diagnosis. Its screener and developmental norms can help you decide whether to seek help, but if you're concerned about a child's speech, the right next step is to talk to a licensed SLP. If a child is already in therapy, always follow their SLP's plan.
