(3 minute read)

Today we sat down with our very own Queenie Bee from Teach Your Monster Number Skills and asked her some questions about her life. We thought it would be a good opportunity for you and your little ones to learn a bit more about her - why don’t you and your kids read it together? Here is a printable version if you’d like the children to read along with you. 

Interviewer: What's your favourite number? 

Queenie Bee: My favourite number has to be 4 - I love how 2 and another 2 make four, that’s 2 twos!

Interviewer: How come you own a number park?

Queenie Bee: Ever since I was a tiny bee I’ve loved numbers. I’d spend hours bumbling along counting flowers and pollen all day long. What I ALWAYS wanted to do is celebrate numbers by combining my other passion — theme parks!

I scrimped and saved counting the pennies, plus a generous donation from my Grandmother Queenie Ay (that’s who I inherited my hair from) I managed to buy a run down old theme park.

Of course, back then it was actually an Alphabet park! Letters absolutely everywhere! I thought ‘nine nine no, this has to go!’ I just had to change it because I love numbers soooooo much and I think everyone should love numbers just as much as I do. 

Interviewer: How much do you love numbers?

Queenie Bee: Oh well how long have you got for this interview? Ho ho! 

Numbers are the best - it is a language everyone can understand, no matter what language you speak. Everyone can learn numbers and they go on and on forever. Not many things can do that you know!

Do you know what - I love numbers so much, I eat number cereal for breakfast, number nuggets for lunch and number salad for dinner! I even dream in numbers! 

Interviewer: If you could build anything in your park what would it be?

Queenie Bee: I’d build a huge statue of me!! Although I don’t think Angela the sea monster would be very happy if she saw it…

Interviewer: Who or what's your biggest Maths inspiration?

Queenie Bee: Whoever invented number bonds, they’re so fun aren’t they?

Interviewer: What's the deal with Angela the Sea Monster?

Queenie Bee: Well Angela can get a little peckish and she has a fondness for submarines and boats. As you can imagine this can be troublesome when trying to get monsters to the park. Luckily she also loves our house band and number based songs. If monsters do well practising numbers, the band will play which cheers her up and we can often get her to spit out submarine parts. And other things.

Interviewer: Isn't turtles a weird way to cross a river?

Queenie Bee: Isn’t a bridge a weird way to cross a river? 

It gives turtles a job to do, what do turtles do where you come from? Nothing. That’s right. Poor turtles don’t have anything to do! Terrible shame, I say. They make an excellent bridge.

Interviewer: Where do you get those outfits from?

Queenie Bee: Well Moo (my cow friend) is actually an excellent tailor and makes them for me - as you can see they are skin tight and in my favourite colour - rainbow! 

Interviewer: Where do numsters come from?

Queenie Bee: Well numsters are an unusual species of monster that come from the top of Mount Numbaro, a mountain just north of Number Park. Once a year, I have to hike up there with a huge sack and get them all from a cave at the summit. This is very hard because as you know, they like to stick in groups mostly - the orange ones love being in tens! Makes them very hard to shove in the sack… anyway they love Number Park because they get to go on the slides and the rollercoaster all day…

Well there you have it, straight from the Queen’s mouth! Stay tuned for more interviews with our other Teach Your Monster Monsters coming soon…