The curriculum — ten regions of the Smithing Lands.

The map

One region, one skill at a time.

1. 1

   The Ember Hall

   Phonological awareness + first letter sounds & formation

   Pre-K / K

   "Learn to hear the ore before you shape it." Phonemic awareness woven throughout (rhyme, first-sound isolation, oral blending and segmenting) as listening games with Flicker, the fire spirit. Letter sounds introduced in a utility order so real words are buildable within the first few missions; formation taught with every letter; b/d/p/q spaced far apart with distinct anchors.

2. 2

   The Coal Yard

   Short vowels, CVC blending & segmenting

   K

   Short vowels one at a time (most contrastive first), VC/CVC blending, sound boxes, the first reading commissions ("a fat cat sat"), and first dictation. Capstone unlocks the first Story Vault book.

3. 3

   The Twin Anvils

   Consonant digraphs (sh, ch, th, wh, ck, ng)

   K–1

   sh, ch, th (voiced and unvoiced), wh, ck, ng, and the "two letters, one sound" concept made literal: twin tiles fuse into a single wide tile, so the metaphor teaches the linguistics.

4. 4

   The Chainworks

   Consonant blends; FLOSS & -ck spelling rules

   Grade 1

   Initial blends (st, sp, bl, cr, tr…), final blends (-st, -mp, -nd, -nk), the FLOSS rule (ff ll ss zz), -ck vs -k, and closed-syllable exceptions (old, ind, ild) as "ancient alloys."

5. 5

   The Silent Tower

   Magic E (VCe)

   Grade 1

   Magic E with every vowel. Silent E is a character — a quiet ghost-smith whose hammer reaches back one letter to make the vowel say its name. Contrast pairs (cap/cape, rid/ride) are the core mechanic.

6. 6

   The Twin Rivers

   Vowel teams

   Grades 1–2

   Vowel teams: ai/ay, ee/ea, oa/ow, igh/ie, oo (both sounds), ue/ew, with position-based spelling taught explicitly (ai mid-word, ay at the end). Pattern-sorting dominates here.

7. 7

   The Growler's Den

   R-controlled vowels

   Grade 2

   R-controlled vowels: ar, or/ore, er/ir/ur ("the three growlers wear the same voice"). Heavy dictation, because encoding r-controlled vowels is the hard direction.

8. 8

   The Great Bellows

   Diphthongs, complex vowels, soft c/g, silent letters

   Grade 2

   Diphthongs (oi/oy, ou/ow, au/aw), soft c and g, silent-letter teams (kn, wr, mb, gh), tch/dge, and ph. The "weird air currents" of English, named and tamed.

9. 9

   The Splitting Halls

   Syllable types & division; multisyllable words; schwa

   Grades 2–3

   The six syllable types (closed, open, VCe, vowel team, r-controlled, consonant-le) as six chambers; division patterns (rabbit, tiger, camel, C+le) as splitting techniques; schwa as "the lazy ember." Two- and three-syllable words; compounds.

10. 10

    The Rune Archive

    Morphology: prefixes, suffixes, spelling rules, roots

    Grades 3–4

    Morphology: prefixes (un-, re-, pre-, dis-, mis-), suffixes (-s/-es, -ed with its three sounds, -ing, -er/-est, -ly, -ful, -less, -ness, -tion/-sion), the three suffixing rules (doubling, drop-e, y→i), and Latin roots (port, rupt, struct, tract) as "runes of power" whose meanings fuse when tiles snap together.