Smarty Ears Online, Rebuilt: What’s New in 2026

If you tried Smarty Ears Online a year or two ago, it’s worth another look. This year we rebuilt it around the three parts of an SLP’s week that take the longest: running the session, writing it up, and getting practice to happen between sessions.

Here’s what changed.

90+ activities, each one its own world

Smarty Ears Online now has more than 90 speech, language and literacy activities, and 37 of them also play in Spanish. Many of the classics got a completely new look this year: Articulation Basketball, Smarty Spell, Speech Tic-Tac-Toe and the articulation flashcards and stories, among others. A detective’s case board for “why” questions, a ski slope for he and she, a lily pond for syllables: each activity has its own setting, so students know where they are and what to do.

Finding the right one is quicker too. The activity picker filters by skill, area, language and grade, so you can go from “I need a past tense activity for a 3rd grader” to playing in a few seconds.

11 brand-new activities this month

These 11 activities joined Smarty Ears Online in October, and each one has its own page where you can see it in action:

• Speech Go Fish: students ask Finn the fish “Do you have a…?” and practice their sounds in phrases. Pre-K to 6th grade, in English and Spanish.
• Find the Hidden Items: hunt for the words hidden in a busy scene, then say each one in the spotlight.
• Tap and Say It: each word hidden in a scene steps onto the red carpet. Hear it, say it, earn a star.
• Sentence Ninja: drag word cards into order, from two-word phrases to complex sentences, in 39 levels.
• Ninja Ears: hear a sentence and find its picture among 2, 3 or 4. Every little word counts.
• Who Is It?: look at the photo and pick the pronoun that fits: he, she or they, his or hers, himself or herself.
• Sound Boxes: tap one box for each sound, then put a letter in each box to spell the word.
• Word Chains: change one sound to make a new word, cat to hat to hit, hopping across the river.
• Pattern Sort: sort words by their vowel pattern: short or long a, a_e or ay, oi or oy, ou or ow.
• Heart Words Flash: sight words flash and hide, and the student reads them on sight, in English and Spanish.
• iName It: word finding for adults. Name everyday objects in five rooms of a home, with five kinds of cues, in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Run the session: groups of up to four

You can now run a session with up to four students at once, each with their own targets. The students sit down the side of the screen, and you score each try with one tap: correct (C), almost (A) or try again (W), on screen or with your keyboard. Video models, a mirror camera and a recorder are built into the speech activities, so you don’t need another tab open.

Write it up: reports that write themselves

Every session ends with a report made for that activity. It includes a progress-note sentence you can copy straight into your notes, the words or items to come back to next time, and the standards at the student’s grade. Share it as a PDF or a spreadsheet, or copy it in one click.

Goals keep track of themselves too. Pick from more than 1,200 ready-made goals or write your own, and each goal shows where the student started, where they are now and the target, with “In progress” or “Mastered” beside it. The progress page puts accuracy by area and by goal over the last 30 days, 6 weeks, 90 days or the school year, which is exactly what you need to bring to an IEP meeting.

Keep practice going: student logins and home practice

On Professional Plus and Enterprise Plus, each student can have their own login, with no email needed. Younger students can log in with a QR card. You choose which activities they practice, for how many minutes and how often, and the minutes they play at school or at home show up on their progress page.

Plans and the free trial

• Basic Professional: $29 a month or $240 a year, with a 14-day free trial on the monthly plan. Every activity, scoring, goals and reports for your own caseload.
• Professional Plus: $39 a month or $340 a year. Everything in Basic, plus student logins and home practice.
• Enterprise Plus: for schools, districts and therapy companies with 3 or more educators, at $340 per educator per year, with shared students and an admin account.

Smarty Ears Online runs in your browser, best in Chrome or Safari on a computer, and you can share the tab in Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet for teletherapy.

I built Smarty Ears Online for the SLP I was on a busy Tuesday. If it’s been a while since you looked, I’d love for you to try the new one with your own students this week.