(2 minute read)
It’s that time of year again in the UK - the sun is making its way back through the gray of winter and paying us more than a kindly visit. April is also ‘Stress Awareness Month’, and with increasing links between growing produce and mental well-being, we think it's a good time to get out in the garden or grow some yummy things on your windowsill with your kids. It’s more than just a fun activity—it’s a little bit of everyday magic.
They’ll learn that good things take time, that plants need care (and the occasional pep talk), and that tiny actions—like watering a seed—can lead to big results. Watching something grow because they nurtured it? That’s some powerful confidence-building.
When our team was discussing the next steps for Adventurous Eating, it felt natural for us to introduce ‘the growing game’, where kids get to see the part before the food arrives on their plate. In the growing game, kids encourage their monster to plant and water seeds until they grow big enough for harvesting. Once harvested, the seeds are prepped to be fed to our hungry monster Bub!
In the real world, growing fruit and veg connects kids to where food actually comes from—and it might just turn your picky eater into a proud produce snacker. It also serves as an introduction to many early science topics. It is a hands-on way to learn about seasons, life cycles, and ecosystems without even really trying.
More than anything, gardening is about making memories. We asked some of our monsters here at Teach Your Monster HQ, and they certainly had some fond memories of growing plants as kids, including one 1st prize-winning daffodil grower (in 1980)!
One of our game developers shared this memory:
“I won the tallest sunflower competition, which was grown in my grandad's back garden. We had a photo in Thornbury's local paper with me on his shoulders next to the flower to demonstrate its AWESOME HEIGHT. My memory is hazy, but I strongly suspect that my grandad did all the work here. As a result, I won a bird table, which is exactly what every 7-year-old wants, if you ask me.”
Another shared a memory of growing cress in an empty eggshell with a face. Well, we thought this was an absolutely fabulous idea, so we came up with our own monster version: Grow your own Cress Monster!
Cress is super easy, quick to grow and delicious in a sandwich, making it a rewarding growing experience to have with your kids. All you need is some cress seeds, an egg, some cotton wool and scissors. The cress should sprout within 7 days and be ready to harvest in just a few weeks!
Download your ‘Grow your own Cress Monster’ instructions here.
(4 minute read)
We asked Adam Samuel, a class teacher at Abbott Alphege Academy, about ‘reading for pleasure’ and how our game, Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun, connects the worlds of reading for pleasure and technology.
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Adam Samuel. I am a class teacher at Abbot Alphege Academy.I currently teach a year three-four class.
I'm a jack of all trades in school. The beautiful thing about being a primary school teacher is that you do a bit of everything. So I'm also the computing subject lead and modern foreign language lead. So I'm not the reading lead, but I am passionate about reading.
That's the nice thing about being a primary school teacher is you get to share a love and a passion for multiple things with the children, rather than just one.
How important do you feel reading for pleasure is for kids?
So important! It's a way of creating new worlds and new experiences. A lot of children can get overwhelmed with the world and with life. Reading a book, having the opportunity to lose yourself in someone else’s creation or world, whether it be Julia Donaldson, Rachel Bright or Jim Field, is an escape. Children need to be given the opportunity to escape into these worlds to have a broader appreciation for life in general, and it develops a love and passion for books.
What struggles do the kids in your class experience in reading for pleasure?
Access to books. We have a nice library at school, and we have a local library, but one of the biggest struggles is maintaining that at home. We don't know what they (the kids) have at home and what their access is like at home.
Ensuring they have access to a wide range of books is another struggle. Showing them how to engage with books and maintaining that engagement as well. It's quite easy for some children to get hooked on one genre, which is great, but also allows them an opportunity to broaden that reading passion.
Why can it be hard to instil a love of reading in young children?
I think with young children, we're constantly battling the modern world. Technology is always offering new and exciting things for children to be doing, whether it's a new game to play or a new media platform to engage with. Picking up a book is probably the least of their interests. So I think it's important for us to find new ways of ensuring that children maintain their love and interest in reading.
Can you tell us about your experience with Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun?
Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun is absolutely fantastic in ensuring that children maintain a passion for reading and are exposed to a wide range of texts. It's engaging. It's fun. And it crosses two worlds. It crosses the world of technology with the world of books. Today, it’s really important that we bring those two together. Otherwise, we'll just have kids lost in games, without developing essential skills, such as reading.
How does the game help you as a teacher with reading for pleasure?
Reading for Fun helps as a teacher because it gives children an engaging way of accessing books that's different to just going into the library or a bookshop. It's quite easy to get lost and overwhelmed by too many books. And what's nice with Reading for Fun is that it's a smaller number of books that they can engage with over whatever time frame they want. They get to do little jobs and little activities within the game that allow them to do more than just reading. So they are reading without necessarily always knowing that they're reading, so it's multifaceted, which is great.
The other nice thing about Reading for Fun is the fact that they earn the books incrementally, and they get to earn them as rewards and collect them in a library. So when they go into their home, you can see the books piling up on their bookshelves, just like they might at home. They can go into their bookshelf and select the book they want to read that they've earned as a reward for these jobs, which is really nice.
Do you have any special tips for other teachers on how to integrate it into their classroom practice?
My tip for other teachers is to download Teach Your Monster Reading for Fun, give the children some logins, and see how much they engage with and have fun with it. It will change your day.
Also download the login details for each child, stick it in the front of their read and record books. Send it home so that they can engage with it at home as well as at school.
Do you recommend that parents use the game at home, and if so, how?
I would. It's a great way of engaging your children to read and exposing them to a wide range of books. It's also really handy if you want to distract your children with a book in the car on a long journey. Or maybe you're going away on holiday and you want the children to be quiet for a little bit, and it's a nice way of engaging them and keeping them occupied while you're out and about.
It doesn't need to be used for long. Even just 10 to 20 minutes a day could be the difference between a child who is engaged with reading and a child who's not, and the child who's passionate for reading and a child who's not.
This article was just a snippet of our larger case study interview, which you can read here.
(3 minute read)
We’re always happy to hear how our teachers use our games for the maximum effect, and as many teachers return from their half terms here in the UK, we thought it would be a good time to share a few different ideas on how teachers around the world use and integrate Teach Your Monster games in the classroom.
The following suggestions can be a 5-minute warm-up, a time-filler, or even a way to jazz up your full lesson with a whole hour of learning…
Carpet time
During carpet time, the teacher can select a game to demonstrate playing on the interactive whiteboard and then allow the children to take turns or come up in pairs to play.
If you’d like to lead the learning (and keep bottoms on carpets!), you can give each child a whiteboard to use and ask the children questions like:
“Which number comes next? Write it in secret on your whiteboard” (Number Skills)
“How do you write this grapheme? Can you think of any other ways to write it?” (Teach Your Monster to Read)
They can respond on whiteboards and show you when they’ve finished.
Use our game Reading for Fun to select a book and read together as a class for a calming activity. Teachers can be pretty hands-off with this if you get a ‘lucky helper’ from the class to turn the page, and it is perfect if you need 5 minutes to set up for the next activity of the day.
Use for individual learning (where children have access to individual devices or laptops)
Set up children with their own profiles and let them take their monster through the game—this allows kids to play at their own pace and recap necessary skills. For brand new players, you can demonstrate the log-in and game on the interactive whiteboard first, then allow them to explore independently.
One of our super fans, teacher Lori Cash, recommends peer-to-peer help for new players or selecting game ‘prefects’ to teach other kids how to play.
Teachers can ask children to go to ‘Practice Mode’ during individual play for a particular skill, game, or number, providing targeted practice on weaker skills.
Use in a carousel, centres or ‘learning stations’
If you like to set up ‘stations’ for learning, one station could be set up for ‘e-learning ’ with devices to practice a specific subject using one of our games. If you’re not sure what ‘stations’ are, read more about them in this handy article.
For reading time, this station could be Teach Your Monster to Read for early readers, or Reading for Fun for more progressed readers.
For math lessons, this station could be set up with Number Skills, either with specific goals in mind using ‘Practice Mode’, or more of free play time through the adventure mode. We’ve provided a handy printable for you to download and print for your focused Number Skills station here.
We also have a whole bunch of handy printables for the other stations in class too, find those here.
Reward time
The best part is that playing our games feels like reward time — kids love iPads, and what better thing to do with reward time than some more stealthy learning?
Another teacher, Adam Samuel, recommends using the game after break times.
“I often use it to settle in back down after break time or lunch time. It's a really nice way to gently bring them back in after what could be a nice fraught break or lunch!”
I hope this has provided you with some new ideas for using the Teach Your Monster games in the classroom. We’re always looking for ways to help our teachers out so if you’d like to share your ideas on how you use Teach Your Monster in the classroom, please drop us a message at [email protected]. Happy teaching!
Kay Leathers, Ex-Primary teacher and freelance consultant
(3 minute read)
Back in August 2024, we released the Stage 3 update for Number Skills. Introducing new minigames and new skills, such as numbers to 100 and the foundations of multiplication, we thought we’d use this article to check in on Number Skills and see how it’s doing.
Adding Number Skills Stage 3 aimed to expand the educational content on offer to cover most of the mathematical pedagogical requirements for EYFS/KS1 or Year 1/kindergarten. To do this, a whole second island of seven new minigames was added, including:
Monster Trucks - Jump into a monster truck and bash the other trucks! This game helps kids to practice quickly recognising numbers to 20.
Volcano - Jump up the platforms and save your monster from the fiery lava. This game helps children get more familiar with numbers up to 100, including counting from, backwards, and in groups.
Ghost Train - Get the right queue of numsters riding the spooky ghost train! This game helps children practice addition and combining numbers (number bonds) up to 20.
Bubbles - Pop and merge bubbles to hit the target number. This game helps children practice breaking numbers apart and putting them back together (composition/decomposition).
Carousel - Arrange the unicorns in the right order and watch them spin around the carousel! This game is based on number lines or tracks, a familiar classroom tool.
Storklift - Help your monster load the right number of boxes on and off the truck. Helps with understanding place value and working with tens and ones.
Dino Dash - Quickly load up the right number of plates of snails to feed the hungry customers. This game helps with the foundations of multiplication through working with equal groups/arrays.
Following this release, we’ve tracked the data and can now report that:
- Stage 3 Adventure mode (the main gameplay) has been played by over 1.5m players (that’s roughly the population of San Antonio, Texas!)
- The Bubbles minigame alone has been played over 3 million times!
- Number Skills has had over 3.5 million players overall, with 30 million plays total.
But let’s not have the data lead the way, let’s look at some real reviews from our players:
★★★★★
It’s great!!!!! · We have been using it, and my 7-year-old is learning her numbers skills so well. ITS AMAZING!!!!!!!
Parent
★★★★★
Fantastic app!!! The only educational app my 6-year-old daughter will engage with. She wakes up asking to play it. So happy I found this app. I really hope you can make more of these to help with things like telling the time and maybe ones that can help with daily task and wellbeing. You've done a fantastic job and the fact it's just one simple affordable payment with no monthly subscription has blow my mind even more. 5 stars from me most definitely!!!
Parent
Lori Cash, US teacher said
"My students have really enjoyed doing the Experienced Level of Teach Your Monster Number Skills and several of them have completed it already. We have found it to be a good review of the skills they have learned in first grade and it has contributed to them scoring well on their NWEA test. They continue to enjoy the wonderful animated characters and have found it easy to use and understand."
We’re thrilled by the response to the newest update to Number Skills and have already had many players contact us to ask for more. We’ve got plenty of updates in the works—keep an eye on our socials and newsletter for what’s coming next!
Leo Allen, Product Manager for Teach Your Monster Number Skills
(1 min read)
Have you seen our recent makeover? New Year — new start we say!
After asking our users what they’d like to see, we’re currently in the process of making our site more helpful for everyone by adding more useful information on our games, making our learning resources more accessible for all and adding a dedicated teacher tab, so that you busy teachers out there don’t waste any precious teaching-time searching for what you need.
We’ve started the makeover with our game pages — check out the links below. We especially LOVE the new Reading for Fun makeover, so be sure to check that one out!
Teach Your Monster to Read
Reading for Fun
Number Skills
Adventurous Eating
We’ve added information to take you through the pedagogical (educational) content, how the games work and how to integrate them into your child’s learning. Meet the experts on our expert pages, find out more about our minigames and even meet the team who worked on all these wonderful monsters!
As always, we’d like to know what our audience thinks. Please send us your feedback! Is there anything you’d like to see on our website that we don’t currently have? Let us know by contacting us via [email protected].
(1 min read)
We're so excited to be adding our comic ‘Bongo Blows His Top’ to the Reading for Fun game! ‘Bongo Blows His Top’ is a story about BIG feelings and how to manage them. Created with consultancy from Dr Angharad Rudkin, a Child Clinical Psychologist, this wonderful comic explores the feelings you get when experiencing anger, helping children identify their own feelings and sharing strategies to help deal with those tricky feelings.
As well as all the more practical elements, having comics in Reading for Fun adds another genre of reading to the richness of our game, exposing kids to all types of text. As a person with a passion for illustration and someone who leans towards the more visual side of learning, comic books still make up part of my regular reading material, allowing the enjoyment of the art AND reading at the same time.
Whether your kid is a visual learner or not, they'll love this. So tell your Reading for Fun fan that we’re adding a new comic for them to put on their monster’s bookshelf, and get them to share it with you when they do… I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a great addition to our game.
The 'Bongo Blows His Top' comic gets delivered to your monster’s house from the third day in the game, and is being released as an in-app event on Apple, which runs from April 1st to 30th 2025. The free comic also goes into the Google Play, Amazon, Amazon Kids+ and web versions of the game.
Get Reading for Fun on the Apple App Store today!
Keep an eye on our social posts, as we'll announce when this has been added so you can make sure to update the game and get this comic!
If you'd like a preview of 'Bongo Blows His Top', you can download the full comic from our 'Comics' area in our Learning Resources.
Kay Leathers
Ex-teacher, illustrator and freelance consultant for Teach Your Monster.
(2 min read)
WORLD BOOK DAY! A charity that’s passionate about reading. Why? According to the World Book Day website, “Reading for fun is the single biggest indicator that a child will grow up to enjoy a happier and more successful life – more than their family circumstances, their parents’ educational backgrounds or their income.”
As you know, we are very passionate about reading here at Teach Your Monster, from learning your first letter sounds to reading longer sentences, texts and reading different types of books for pleasure.
That’s why this World Book Day, on the 6th March, 2025, we’ll offer both our literacy apps, Teach Your Monster to Read and Reading for Fun for FREE, for 24 hours only! Be sure to share the news with all the teachers and parents you know, so they can get it on the day.
We love to see how the games help support real-life reading away from the screen. We’re sure that all the parents out there are getting ready to share their favourite childhood books, or perhaps looking to pick up a new favourite using the £1/€1.50 book token.
Whatever you’re doing this World Book Day, it’s a day to celebrate the magic of reading and especially encourage reading for pleasure. We hope you and your little ones enjoy some time to sit down with a good book!
To help give you a little extra free time to relax and read, we’ve also created free reading resources, including character masks from our reading game Reading for Fun, which are perfect for a quick and easy World Book Day costume... Happy reading!
For more information about World Book Day, please visit the website.
World Book Day® is a registered charity, company and trademark.
2024 has been an incredible year for Teach Your Monster, with millions of children benefiting from our fun, educational games that inspire confidence and a love of learning. None of this happens without you! Here’s how we’ve made a difference together this year…
Building Confidence with Numbers
Since the launch of Number Skills Stage 3 in August, children have played the new mini-games 3.5 million times! This research-backed, curriculum-aligned numbers game is helping children aged 3 to 6 practise their number skills and grow in confidence in a way that’s both fun and educational, whether at school or at home.
Inspiring a Love of Reading
Our flagship game, Teach Your Monster to Read, welcomed an incredible 3 million new players in 2024, helping children around the world take their first steps into reading. Meanwhile, the delightful Reading for Fun game has been played 35 million times this year! With its quaint village setting and over 70 books to explore, children have read more than 30 million books in the game so far. One parent shared their thoughts with us:
“My daughter loves this game. She loves the books and the monsters that she interacts with. Thank you for developing such great games!!” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Encouraging Adventurous Eating
Adventurous Eating helps children explore a variety of fruits and vegetables, and it continues to thrive, with 3,000 children playing every day. Designed with Dr Lucy Cooke, an expert in children’s eating habits, this game complements early years food education and was recognised as a finalist in the Games for Change 2024 Awards in the Health and Wellness category! Get yourself into Bub’s Garden and grow some veggies today!
Supporting New Beginnings
Starting school can be a big milestone, and our brand new comic “First Day Nerves” has been a comforting resource for many families. Downloaded over 40,000 times this year, this beautifully illustrated comic (created with input from child psychologist Dr Angharad Rudkin) helps ease children into their early school days. It’s free to print in colour or black and white.
Thank you for your support
None of this would be possible without YOU, our wonderful community! By playing, sharing, and purchasing the apps, you’re directly supporting our not-for-profit mission to give millions of children the best start in life through learning, fun and play. Every penny goes back into creating new games and resources to empower children.
Thank you for making 2024 a year of incredible impact! ❤️
Developed with Dr Lucy Cooke, our game Adventurous Eating aims to turn fussy eaters into Adventurous Eaters - but just what is the research behind this? In this article, we explore the SAPERE method and its influence on Adventurous Eating.
Teach Your Monster Adventurous Eating is designed as a fun game for kids that almost works like a TV show with a different food or vegetable featured in every food party. It has games and catchy songs, plus the chance to grow their own food in Bub’s garden. But as with all our games, underpinning the entertainment is some serious research. In this case the Sapere Method.
What is the Sapere method?
Developed by the French chemist and ethnologist (which is a kind of social scientist) Jacques Puisais, the SAPERE method is based on engaging the senses and knowing their importance in getting to know food and learning eating habits in childhood. The method derives from years of expert research in nutrition and education.
The SAPERE method was developed to address various eating challenges, including food allergies, promoting diverse eating habits in children, and combating rising obesity rates. Tested on children of different ages, people who worked with the children found measured improvements in varied eating habits.
By making use of all the human senses — smell, taste, sight, hearing, and touch — children can learn new things about food through experimentation and their personal experience. The more children engage with food and watch others engage with food too, the more likely they are to build a complete sensory adventure into food.
This method also encourages children to give their opinions about food and share their experience of trying new things. Any child’s experience of a particular food is not right or wrong, it’s just their experience - which is always ok! Furthermore, during tests, it’s been discovered that when children observe others trying new foods, they’re more likely to give it a go themselves. It is the principles behind this that are woven into the Adventurous Eating game - creating a really fun and safe space for children to explore new foods with their monster… and be encouraged to give them a try in real life too.
Challenges with food can often begin in toddler years
Our Adventurous Eating expert Dr. Lucy Cooke says “People's food preferences and eating habits track through the lifetime. We know that lots of fussy children do eventually grow out of it and become better eaters later, but at the same time, laying down a foundation of good eating in early childhood is likely to track all the way through life. It's just better for children to eat well from the start.”
Doubts and fear of new food, or ‘food neophobia’, is at its strongest in two to three-year-olds, and it might take a few steps to overcome these fears.
Researchers have observed that the more a child notices that a food substance is available, the more often it will be chosen later. Children need to taste something roughly fifteen to twenty times in order to become familiar with a new food. The research also noted that children who have difficulties with sensory integration (how the brain interprets things we sense) also benefit greatly from the method.
How does Adventurous Eating help with food aversion?
Adventurous Eating reflects some of the key theory behind the SAPERE method using fun sensory mini-games. Children get to take their monster to a food party, where they encourage them to try a variety of fruit and veg using all their senses. The narrator provides gentle, encouraging language, while the monsters express their preferences throughout the game—perfectly modelling the idea that food is a safe, enjoyable experience and that it's okay not to like everything you try.
Dr. Lucy Cooke says “Food in reality can be quite stressful for children. If children are able to explore things in an app, with some distance, then it can help reduce anxiety in some children.. it’s just a very good way of educating children about foods without actually having to have the food in situ.”
This idea is supported by parents who have tried the Adventurous Eating game with their children. One parent reported:
“My child has food aversion and normally requires weeks of occupational therapy to try a new food. After playing your Adventurous Eating game they tried seven new foods! I made a little notebook so they could rate and tell me how each food felt, smelled, looked, sounded, and tasted - just like in your game. I also asked them to rate it on a scale 1 through 10, and if they would ever try it again. Out of the seven different foods my child tried, they liked two of them. That is HUGE progress for them. I am very thankful for your game!”
In the latest update to the Adventurous Eating game, there’s now a useful ‘Practice Mode.’ You can quickly dive into a particular fruit or veg and let your child explore it with their monster (just before they try it in real life), hopefully leading to easier mealtimes!
To maximise the game’s impact, pair it with real-life activities. For example, ask your child “If your monster has explored a tomato today, maybe we could explore a real one together?” Or copy one of Adventurous Eating’s sense games at home and ask some questions about the food.
We have a helpful list of questions and things to talk about that you can download here.
Good luck with your adventurous eater!
Al Goss
Product Manager for Teach Your Monster Adventurous Eating
Did you know that as well as ‘Adventure Mode’, we have ‘Practice Mode’ in three of our games? If not, then this is the perfect article for you.
We know that practice makes perfect right? Perfection is difficult to achieve (and probably way too much to put on your average 6-year-old!) So here at Teach Your Monster, we believe that practice makes progress. Every repetition and mistake helps children to progress and learn, so we keep practice right at the forefront of all our games.
‘Practice mode’ allows you to access the games contained within ‘Adventure Mode' quickly and directly - think of it as a shortcut menu to the specific learning activities contained within the larger game world. Using practice mode you can speedily create tailored activities for targeting those particular areas where your learner needs to spend focused time. Whether that’s in phonics, early maths or just reminding them why peas are actually a lot of fun - and delicious too!
We know the biggest fans of Practice Mode are teachers, who can select targeted activities for particular children, have a whole-class interactive whiteboard session, or even a quick time-filling activity to get the kids back into their learning after a rowdy playtime. Practice Mode has so many applications, we thought it would be good to remind you all of what it is and how you can access it.
If you have a kid who is struggling with their phonics learning, tricky words and letter sound matching, then Teach Your Monster to Read Practice Mode is just the thing. Brushing up on these skills is made particularly easy with the three options in Practice Mode:
Sighties - For kids to quickly identify sight words (also known as ‘tricky’ or ‘non-decodable’ words)
Minigames - These games are found in Adventure Mode, so this works well side-by-side with what the child has already played. Practise specific grapheme-phoneme-correspondences (GPCs) in a variety of letter-sound matching/blending and segmenting games.
Flashcards - to practise all GPCs with images.
Want to spend more time on a specific game, number or skill? Then go to Practice Mode in Number Skills.
Skill - Select a skill you’d like to practise. This could be counting up, down or on, Number Bonds, Subitising (the ability to recognise numbers without counting) or counting in 2s, 5s or 10s.
Number - Select a particular number or range of numbers to practise.
Game - These mini games are the same games available in Adventure Mode. Select a game and number to focus on.
Adventurous Eating’s Practice Mode allows you to select particular fruit or vegetables, and interact with them using the monster's senses. Designed to allow the adult to select a specific food, Practice Mode allows the child to interact with that food through the game, making them a little bit braver with it. It works well if you have a picky eater who doesn’t like certain foods — tomatoes, for example.
Select tomatoes from Practice Mode and let them play through all the sensory games with the tomato. Next time they encounter one in real life, maybe they will even give it a little try! Perhaps you have a recipe with an unfamiliar food in it? Before cooking give your little one a bit of time to get comfortable with the new fruit or vegetable using Practice Mode. They might even then be excited to try it!
At Teach Your Monster we are always trying to make as much positive impact on our littlest users while helping to make our biggest users' lives easier. We think Practice Mode goes a long way to achieving this. Learn more about Practice Mode here or access it from the game on the web or your at-home app.
