Want to encourage your child to write creatively, learn new vocabulary and practise without any nagging? You may want to try Night Zookeeper for an online learning experience for your child – whether he or she is a budding author or just needs to work on being a better writer. I chanced upon this gamified platform and my child has been hooked ever since!
Let’s find out what Night Zookeeper is all about.
Overview of Night Zookeeper
Night Zookeeper is a website that encourages writing through gamification. Children are the zookeepers and get to create animals in their zoo as well as their own zookeeper avatar. They take part in writing challenges, word games, grammar exercises to earn orbs. They can also see challenges won by other zookeepers and see the prize-winning writing entries.
Gaming fans will be pleased to know that they can join clubs within Night Zookeeper according to their interests like Minecraft or Roblox to exchange tips, write fan fiction and stories.
Honing Writing Skills using Edutainment and Fun Games
To improve in writing, as with most skills, one must keep practising with good feedback and guidance. It was hard to motivate my child to write so chancing upon Night Zookeeper was a blessing! Its interface was captivating and compelling my child to want to participate in the activities – they were mostly short writing exercises to begin with, and really motivated my child to write.
I am glad there isn’t much resistance when it came to “writing practice” time. The child is also given hints on improving the piece of writing. For instance, using more adjectives or verbs with some words provided helps the child earn more “orbs”
Apart from the chance to write, the child also has to design characters and animals plus add descriptions and a storyline. Feedback is given after every writing work that is submitted by Night Zookeeper instructors who are very encouraging. They also give specific feedback such as words to use.
To improve on specific language skills such as grammar and vocabulary, the children can also complete games like Hangman, sorting words, picking synonyms to boost their knowledge. This is a quick and fun way to learn new words!
Night Zookeeper also publishes its own stories to inspire children to read and write them.
Role of Parents in Night Zookeeper
Parents can see all of their child’s work on the same platform with a parents’ account. This provides a great overview of progress and insight into the child’s mind. I could also see the feedback given and reinforce this in our own writing practice at home.
The child’s progress in terms of completion of challenges and accuracy are detailed in the following sections: Adverbs, Grammar, Reading, Punctuation, Vocabulary. All of these are critical to good writing skills and I am glad it is a holistic approach.
Parent’s Rating of Night Zookeeper
I love this platform! It has helped my child to be a self-initiated writer. While he still has a long way to go, I’m delighted it has helped him gain confidence in writing, learnt new vocabulary and techniques.
There is a 7-day free trial for those who might want to try it for a week, otherwise, a year’s subscription is at 9.92USD a month. Since it’s an “own time own target” practice, I like the convenience of this platform as opposed to enrichment classes which could also be too focused on exam techniques rather than inculcating a joy of writing.
There are also free downloadable resources. A recent pack we received is all about instructions. It helps the child to plan instructions, write them in the form of recipes and using adjectives in instructions.
