Teach Your Monster to Read

First of all, I want to commend this group for making a game that is not only visually appealing to my son but also educational. He has nailed the simple phonics and has only been at it for a few months but can remember them when we are practicing reading. The games are fun to play with him too. He loves being able to “build a monster” and earn rewards for his monster. He loves switching it’s outfits and characteristics when it suits him. The only 2 things I wish would change is that when a new phonics sound is being introduced, that not only the sounds the letters make are said but also the name of the letter or name of the letter pair for example “mmm” for letter “M” and “shhh” for “Sh” or but also reinforcing the name by saying something like “the letter M makes the sound ‘mmm’” and “the letters S&H together make the ‘shhh’ sound” to help with reinforcement of letter names as well as their sounds. It is better to play this game with him than to let him go on by himself because he needs that reinforcement and I’m happy to give it. The second thing would be when it’s time to read the sentences to figure out what the monster wants like “the big red boat” I wish that when he taps on the word they are read aloud to help with sight word recognition on his own. He tries to touch them to make them sound off but it just isn’t programmed that way in the game to allow that I guess. So other than those two things, it’s a wonderful game and we love the math version too!

I’m not generally a fan of app based learning, but have been COVID schooling a kinder student who struggles majorly with the rudiments of reading, like letter sounds and blending. This app has turned reading from a frustrating subject to his favorite subject. He only plays for 10-15 minutes a day, as a supplement to our usual phonics lessons, but he has improved in every area by leaps and bounds, easily reading through simple books that would’ve been a slow, frustrating process to get through before. He is very motivated by earning prizes for his monster, and loves to show me all the monster accessories, letter sounds, and now “trickies” (sight words) he’s collected. The game has just enough intuitive feedback that he can figure it out almost entirely on his own, but not so much that it encourages guessing. My only complaint is that it does not automatically keep the player from progressing to harder material without mastery. As long as the child has done all the activities in level 1, even if he is still struggling and making a lot of errors in some places, the game will still move on to level 2. Overall, a great way to get struggling readers motivated, and build confidence.

When my 4 year old daughter began using this game she loved it and didn't want to put it down. When she started she knew all the letters of her alphabet and many sounds. Within the first two months she was reading simple words (CVC). By the fourth month she was reading simple sentences. By 9 months she had completed finished all three levels of the game and could read proficiently at a 2nd grade level (about 550 lexile). I combined this game with Usborne Books & More's Very First Reading Set, which progresses using the same sounds/words as each part of the game. The only downsides of this game are: as an American some of our pronunciations are different than how they are taught in the game (just a few words, but I enjoy hearing the accents of the narrator and characters), and single sounds/parts of the game cannot be focused on for further practice; the entire level has to be repeated. With my daughter I made up flash cards to practice her sounds and tricky words, but being able to select a letter/letter combination/word to repeat would be a nice feature. Overall, though, I give this game 5 stars for being FUN and very EFFECTIVE. I recommend this to everybody!