The games edition
In our last Monster Mash, we promised to let you know as soon as our first games were ready. They’re live now, and we’d love your children to try them.
This edition is all about games: what’s there to play today, how your children can help us design the next ones, and how you can shape what we build for the classroom.
There are ten games to play now, and they’re free for your school and your families.
Three for the classroom
Three are designed for the classroom. Children listen to a word sound by sound in Miss Oh No’s Post Bag, sort real words from made-up words in Tricky’s Buried Treasure, and pop the matching sound in The Balloon.
Seven for fun at home
The other seven are for fun at home, with a maze to steer round, crystals to collect and lily pads to hop across, all practising the sounds you’ve taught.
Please share the link with your families:
We’d love the next games to come from the children who play them.
We’ve made a simple game ideas sheet for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Children tick the monster they’d like in their game, draw their idea and give it a name. An adult can write down how the game works.
There are two versions, so your children will see the monsters they know from your classroom:
There’s no need to run a formal competition. Simply take a photo of any sheets your children complete and email them to [email protected] with the name of your school. If it’s easier, an email telling us about their ideas is just as welcome.
We’ll make at least three new games from ideas sent in by our schools. We can’t make every idea, but when we use one, we’ll credit the school and the monsters will write to the children to say thank you.
We know a phonics lesson has to keep moving. A game only earns its place in the classroom when it gets more children responding without slowing the teaching down, so our classroom games are short and designed for one part of a session.
If there’s a point in your lessons where a quick interactive activity would help, please tell us what it would look like. Ideas for games that families would enjoy at home are very welcome too.
These games are our first go, so your feedback really matters. Tell us what your children enjoyed, what was too easy or too hard, and anything that didn’t work well on your whiteboard or tablets.
It will help us develop the approach as we add at least 20 more games by December.
All the best,
The Monster Phonics Team
