Teach Your Monster to Read is a free online game for beginning readers. It starts with individual letter sounds, first 
consonants, then vowels, and then blending into words. Kids who are drawn to learning on the computer will likely enjoy the game. Each player creates his or her own monster who crash lands his space ship in a land of islands. Each island king helps to repair a part of the space ship if the monster can find the king’s missing letters.
Things that work well:
- Graphics and sounds are fun and colorful without being obnoxious or overwhelming.
- Tasks are fairly intuitive if you have played any other computer games.
- You can stop and start the game; it will re-start you where you last stopped.
- If a child makes a mistake, the game allows him or her to repeat the activity until it is correct.
Things that didn’t work so well:
- Many of the letters sounds demonstrated were too soft even though other sounds were plenty loud enough.
- I didn’t work all the way through the game but I did make it to the second island. The routine and the activities were getting a bit repetitive. You seven year old’s mileage might vary.
- The prizes were on the odd side–clothing pieces for your monster, oh-kay, but underwear? And I really have a thing against good as prizes even if it’s pretend molded jello.
- And some child (read–boy) is probably going to point out to great hilarity all around that the monsters seem to “poop” their stars. (Play, you’ll see what I mean. Or maybe it’s just me!) Not a prob at home but if you had your whole classroom playing, this observation could lead to a bit of a class management struggle!
It’s hard to find really excellent computer games and Teach Your Monster to Read is certainly not a bad one–but neither is it an outstanding one. It won’t really teach a child to read but it is free and it may help some children who need a bit more practice and need it in a novel format.
If you try it with your children, post here and let us know what you think.
Babette
3 comments
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June 28, 2012 at 10:38 am
Monsters Can Read (@MonstersCanRead)
Hi Babette,
Thanks for the review!
We really appreciate all feedback – we’re making a new game in September and so any comments and thoughts are really helpful.
I thought I’d just add a couple of comments which may clarify a couple of points you made:
Regarding some of the sounds being too soft – that’s a really interesting point and one we’ll definitely look into. It’s tricky as some of the sounds naturally are a lot clearer than others (e.g. “a” as opposed to “p”) – we had tried to get all the sounds as even as possible but we maybe could do more in that area. We’ll see if we can rectify this for the next version.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that the game’s full title is “Teach Your Monster to Read: First Steps”, and is designed for 4-6 year olds. It’s only supposed to cover the very first stages of reading (basic sound recognition, blending, segmenting and so on). We’ll be producing more games in the series as time goes on which will take children further along the process of learning to read (especially if people like the first one).
Children that we’ve tested with seem to really enjoy the repetition of the game (adults not so much, but then we have our own grown up computer games!). However if anyone else tries it and finds that this is a problem, please do let us know.
Thanks again for the review and the feedback, we really do appreciate it. The Usborne Foundation’s sole aim is to help parents and teachers to improve literacy and we can only do this if we get good feedback from those at the coalface.
All the best,
The Teach Your Monster to Read Team
June 28, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Babette
Thanks, Team! It’s good to hear from you and that you are actively seeking out input to improve TYMTR. September’s not that far off and I look forward to seeing TYMTR v.2.
I’m glad you can look at the sound issue. Since phonological awareness is so critical to reading, it’s a key part of the game (or any reading instruction). I was impressed that the sounds did not have “uh” after them (“p-uh,” “d-uh,” etc.). But it was very hard to hear some. If I hadn’t already known what to listen for or how two letters sounded different (for instance, “g” and “d”), I wouldn’t have been able to discern them from what the game provided.
I did realize it was a “beginning to read” program but I’m a bit surprised at the age range of 4-6 when considering the game skills especially the flower game. It has a lot of stimulation and moves very fast. I wonder about a child’s frustration level if they learn the sound skill but then couldn’t handle to game skill needed. Would a slower speed setting be possible? Or a way for a younger child to eventually get past this level?
I figured, too, that most kids would either enjoy or not mind the repetition. As you said, it’s written for kids, not adults.
I’d love to hear from readers what their experience is with this and other aspects of the game.
It’s a great start in a much needed arena. I do look forward to the next edition and thanks for listening and updating us.
Babette
July 4, 2012 at 5:58 am
Flora
Hi there,
My daughter will be five in September and is at the end of nursery (so in theory no formal phonics teaching yet but she does have exposure to a slightly older sister…).
She really enjoys the game and my biggest struggle is trying to slow her down. I tried to explain that it will hard for her to remember the graphemes if she learns a lot in one sitting but then I just realised she can start the thing again if she gets to the end and that as long as she’s having fun then it doesn’t really matter.
I haven’t noticed her struggle to hear the individual phonemes; where she finds it hard to hear is in the ‘Princess Tower’ game where a word is spoken and she needs to segment to spell. Some of these words are not particularly familiar to her (jab, rap) and when she hears them incorrectly (for instance ‘rat’ for ‘rap’) that’s when she gets frustrated.
As for the dexterity needed for the game, that hasn’t been an issue. The flower game was a challenge at first and I got called over and found it difficult myself! But after one round she got the knack and it’s been fine. If she weren’t a determined person this might have been an issue; I can’t imagine my older daughter would have stuck with it – but then, she could have stuck to the alternatives.
The games seem intuitive – after s-a-t-p I’ve paid very little attention to be honest – and (apart from the flower game issue mentioned above) she has managed to access them with little effort.
Had she not picked up learning phonemes from her sister, and were she not on a self-fuelled mission to learn to decode, she probably would not learn from scratch using this game. However, it’s a really good tool for consolidation for the type of learner that she seems to be. As with all learning, it’s unlikely to suit everyone and would be no substitution for sitting down together with a well loved book in order to get a good understanding of what learning to read really means.
Her own endorsement is: ‘It’s really good and I’ve learned lots of letters.’
We’ll be looking out for no. 2 in September!