Setting up a new child

Before you start

You'll need to know your child's first name and their month and year of birth — that's everything. Spello uses the birth month/year to work out a starting spelling age; it isn't stored for any other purpose, and it's never shown to other users.

Step by step

1. Sign in at manage.spello.uk as the parent.
2. From the dashboard, click Add child.
3. Enter your child's first name, then pick their month and year of birth from the drop-downs.
4. Choose a username (this is what they'll type at login) and a password. We suggest something the child already knows well — a pet's name, a favourite colour.
5. Press Save. You're done.

The child can now sign in at play.spello.uk/login with the username and password you just picked.

Choosing a good username & password

The username only has to be unique within your family account — it doesn't need to be unique globally. "sam" or "noor" is fine.

Our suggestions:

• Use lowercase letters for the username — easier for younger children to type. (Passwords are case-insensitive either way.)
• If you leave the suggested password alone, you'll get something like "lion monkey 59" — two easy-to-spell words plus a two-digit number. Authentication ignores spaces and case, so writing it as "LionMonkey59" on a sticky note still works.
• If that's still too hard, overwrite it with a single short word your child already knows.
• It's OK for siblings to share a password if that makes your life easier — they'll still have separate progress.

The first assessment

The first time a child plays, Spello runs an adaptive assessment — up to 60 words. This is almost certainly the longest session they'll ever do on Spello; it's a one-off, and it's what lets every practice session afterwards be correctly pitched.

The assessment starts near (but slightly below) their birth-year expectation and adjusts as they go, tolerating a slip or two without over-reacting. The child doesn't see any scoring during this round — we deliberately don't want them to feel tested. They just play, and Spello learns from it.

For the details of how that placement feeds into future practice, see How Spello works.

Once the assessment is complete, Spello picks a "working at" level. From then on, practice sessions are pitched at that level and move up (or down) over time as the child's mastery data grows. If the placement looks wrong, you can re-run the assessment from the child's profile at any time.

Changing details later

From your parent dashboard, open a child's profile and click Edit. You can change their name, username, password, and birth month/year at any time. A birth-month correction will not reset their progress — their difficulty level is now driven by mastery data rather than age, so the change just adjusts labelling.

If the assessment placed a child too high or too low, you can re-run the assessment from the child's profile page. This is a good first move if a child comes home saying "the words were all too hard" or "all too easy".

Adding more than one child

A standard family account holds up to four children. If you've got a larger family and need room for more, email [email protected] and we'll raise the limit on your account.

Each child logs in separately with their own username and sees only their own progress, collectables and streaks. You can switch between children from the parent dashboard to see each one's stats, session history and mastery heatmap.