Reviews for Teach Your Monster to Read

Reinforces bad habits. Our 6 year old is trilingual but struggles mightily with reading English. We were hoping this app would help. But there's no negative consequences for getting wrong answers, so she's not reading or sounding anything out. She just guesses until she finds the right word. I highly recommend playing the game together with your child to make sure they're getting out of it what they're supposed to. Which, unfortunately, defeats the purpose of self-guided study apps.

I like it! A few of the mini games have finicky controls and I've seen them glitch out (not making appropriate sounds). A good example is the the spaceship lifting blocks to make a letter tower mini-game. I like having this game on my phone for long car rides, my kids can play something educational. At least they're practicing their reading when they would otherwise be complaining how boring the car ride is.

It's a wonderful phonics learning game. Our 4 year old started on it with virtually no knowledge of letters and has learned a fair bit from it (now halfway through game 2), while also enjoying it a lot. My only complaint is that the game progresses quickly between levels even if the player is not getting answers consistently right. The whole game progresses for my son too quickly without additional phonics support from school, etc. (where we live he isn't supported in learning to read at kindergarten), so he is going through the game while only learning some of the letters. We've tried logging him in as a new user so that he could go back through the starting levels (which he wasn't too happy about!), but even so the game is progressing too fast. It would be better if the next level were rewarded only if there are few or no mistakes.

It's great to come across a game that's British and my daughter (4) finds engaging. I love the idea of a monster on the mission, selecting prizes, the illustrations and personalising the monster... However I find it a little fast paced, 1 letter you select 1 game that they consolidate 3x (twice for the same letter and once for another) and then that level is complete. I'd love for 1 letter, 2 games so consolidated 6x. I also don't like the font used, my daughter thought a G was a C.

This app is amazing. After some abortive attempts at teaching my 5 year old to read at home, she started this game and is now playing it obsessively. It's exactly at the right level for her. She knew letter sounds and was beginning to be able to recognise them in words, but only very occasionally tried reading an unfamiliar word. Now she's had a huge boost in confidence and ability, and recently wrote by herself a 'shopping list' of all her favourite items, completely bonkers spelling but absolutely phonetic (so she hadn't copied the words). She finds reading the longer sentences hard (actually doesn't do it, to be honest), but the app is really forgiving with this and there is always enough positive reinforcement to keep going even when you don't get words right first time. The only comment I have is that we'd like a Scottish version! Some 2-letter sounds only work with an English accent, and I found some of the 'er, ir' sounds really hard to distinguish, so I'm not sure what she's learning there!

Both my kids (aged 4 and 7) love this game, and the price is very fair for what you get! My only complaint is that the adventure ends 😁 You can keep playing by returning to planets on your own but my daughter lost interest in that. I wish there was another practice reading adventure, as kids can move quite fast through the games/levels, a follow up game that practiced what they learnt (and could be played over and over, to say increase a top score) would be great.

I find that these games are too difficult for preschool children due to their speed and lack of instructions.

It's not free anymore! My autistic 12-year daughter wants to play it but now you have to log in. I wish it was free again. No, I'm not referring to the game's price, I bought it already, but the log in feature is so annoying! Can you remove that in the next update please?

My son is 4 at the time of this review. He's been playing this game since he was about 2.5 almost 3 years old and we love it. Obviously at first he really didn't understand how to play and just loved all the sounds and creating his monster. However, over time it really helped him learn his letters and letter sounds. We took a technology break but he still asks to play Monsters. This has become one of our homeschooling essentials. I regularly recommend this app to everyone. The hardest part has been getting him to stop playing. 😆

Absolutely amazing! My son got an account through school in Pre-K and he loved it from the start. The levels are simple, but challenging enough to keep his attention and really helped with recognition of letter sounds and sight words. It is fun and educational, which is so hard to find in a good kids game these days. I would recommend this game to anyone with kiddos just starting out or thoes that are struggling with reading!

Amazing app. I definitely recommend it. Also, parents are able to go in and monitor their children's progress on a pretty detailed level. The online "parent portal" made it easy for me to see what combination sounds my son was struggling with, so we could work on building those strengths while reading physical books. My child is now entering 2nd grade and is reading English fluently (including words he hasnt read before) so we are on the next game (Reading for Fun); we both absolutely love it!

My son started playing this game when he was just learning to sound out words. It really was the catalyst to help him see how letters fit together to make sounds. He is at the end of first grade now, and reading at an early third grade level. He still enjoys playing the game, and its a good refresher, particularly for the "tricky" words!

Paid for it less than 2 weeks ago and now they have it for free. Wheres my refund?We are disappointed with this one though Heard such great things & was let down a little. I do like the repetitiveness to teach the kids phonics & simplicity but it seems dated and not as engaging as other similar educational phonics apps. Wish it was brighter and seems like if this was a physical item you could buy in a store like The Dollar Tree.

We love it. It's a great sidekick to the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book (which we've used for three kids so far). However, whatever accent the narrator has makes it really tough for my 4yo to understand what sound they are asking for. It would be *immensely* improved by the option of American English.

My son loves this game, however, it freezes quite frequently after completing the duck game and the rocket game, which causes him to throw the tablet across the room out of frustration. Also, the flower game speed is way too fast for him to follow and he gets upset when he cannot get the monster to travel up the path when necessary. NOT GOOD! He is not coordinated enough to use a mouse on a computer yet, so that is not an option.

My daughter enjoys the monsters and go thru the rehlms that are there. She is learning her site words, I in a way wish that as much as they move forward, they could also go back and redo some of the lessons. We want to reinforce those lessons. She is getting her sight words which is very helpful. I would like to also see how we can improve the sounding out of words. sometimes the words aren't clear and it even confuses me. But overall, i would recommend this greatly for any parent. Its fun for both boys and girls and she still asks to play it. i try to get her to play at least once a week but some days she will spend 2 hours on it playing.

Kids LOVE it! It's so fun to play my kids don't realize they're learning. It's very kid friendly with easy controls and great graphics. They really like earning prizes for their monster. The mini games keep them engaged without burnout. It progresses smoothly so no big jumps in ability which helps keep the kids from getting frustrated. It's not timed so kids can work at their own pace until they've mastered a sound. Overall we LOVE Teach Your Monster to Read!

My four year old loves this game. I assume she must be more than half way through it at this point and it is definitely improving her reading skills. It gives her confidence. my only complaints are: the narrator is not loud enough even when my phone is on high and an option for a narrator with an American accent would be good as she sometimes doesn't know what word they're saying. Overall VERY engaging and worth the $5 one time fee. Better than ABC Mouse in my opinion.

Teach your monster to read is one of my favorite learning apps! My kids used to love it and learn a lot from it. I wish i could give it 5 stars, but there are so many cons. The pros of the app don't even make it worth it anymore. To begin, I have a teacher account, and my students can't even get on and play the apps anymore. The app keeps closing down as soon as you put your birth year in. And now you have to pay for each app 😒, which I did and still won't work. Disappointed is all I can say.

I've used this app on PC many years and recently on the phone. It's great, but there are some difficulties in understanding the different accent for American kids. Especially if your student has a speech impediment or difficulty with R's as this is a British and Phonics based program. I will also say by level 3, Champion Readers, the sound quality seems to need fixed a little. Most of the voices cannot be heard well (on pc) except for the male who says to watch out for the monsters and such. His audio is overwhelming loud where as the female voices are too soft, but that's just on PC for the 3rd level. He now enjoys reading, after using this program for 3 years, in addition to others. Aside from the audio issue for PC users, I've noticed suddenly the pc version is very laggy. Consistently. So we moved to the app and that seemed to fix it. Though our pc is designed specifically for video gaming, the browser based program is just too laggy. His favorite activity has been grabbing 2 balloons to unlock a gate, and then seeing how far he can carry them past the gate. He loves the art work, and gets distracted by it often. Not a complaint.