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!

We have been using this app for a couple of weeks and we love it. My daughter struggles with reading, and her progress with TYMtR has been incredible. She enjoys all the games and is motivated to play. My only complaint is that the “Stat” feature is not working for her profile. On my account I made two student profiles one called “Mom” so I could test the app out to see if it was worth letting my daughter try it, and one in my daughter’s name. I have no problems accessing the Stats for the “Mom” profile, but for about a week, I have not been able to access my daughter’s stats. I would like to be able to use those stats to help her work on problem areas and to determine if she is progressing too fast through the levels. I emailed tech support, but was told that it may be a server issue with the influx of users and to try at different times of day, but no matter the day or time, the Stats are not available for my daughter’s profile but work fine on the other profile. Fixing this issue would make this app a solid 5 star review.

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.