A Great Way to Get Your Kids Writing: Night Zookeeper Review
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Creative writing in your homeschool should not be a chore! Read my complete Night Zookeeper review to see how this program can help your reluctant writers learn key writing skills in a fun, engaging, and interactive way.
Do you have any budding authors in your homeschool? How about kids that would rather have their teeth pulled than spend time writing creatively? (I have both).
One challenge I have faced is how to challenge and encourage each of my kids with different levels of interest and abilities in writing.
In this post, I shared a bit about why engaging our kids in creative writing is important in our homeschooling, and gave some tips on how to do so. One of the resources I mentioned for homeschool families was Night Zookeeper.
When we were exploring options for writing curriculum, Night Zookeeper came up a lot in recommendations. Now that we’ve had a chance to explore it ourselves, I wanted to give you a peek inside our Night Zookeeper experience and share more about it, in case you have been wanting to try it in your own homeschool.
What is Night Zookeeper?
Night Zookeeper is an award-winning online creative writing platform geared for kids, inspired by a magical book series. Kids from the age range of about 6 to 12 years old are inspired and encouraged in their writing as they take care of their night zoos, create unique creatures and collect their own animals along the way.
This program provides a fun way for kids to develop their language arts skills through interactive lessons in a kid-friendly design, game-based activities, writing prompts and personalized feedback on their writing.
Who Should Use Night Zookeeper?
When your kids use the Night Zookeeper online program, they’ll get a lot of practice with reading, grammar skills, and different style of writing. This makes it a great option for your homeschool language arts curriculum.
Kids that already love writing will enjoy engaging with the interactive platform and learning new techniques, and the “gaming” aspect might motivate kids who don’t otherwise like to write.
You could use Night Zookeeper as a full curriculum. You might also like to use it as a supplement to another curriculum if you simply want more writing practice for your kids, or as a productive summer screen-time option.
Click here to try Night Zookeeper for FREE!
Night Zookeeper Review: A Peek Inside
So what will your kids experience while working through the Night Zookeeper program?
Once you have your account set up, your child will log in with their secure username and password (kids are given randomly generated usernames to keep things anonymous). They’ll begin the program by creating their own Night Zookeeper avatar and magical animals – my daughter got such a kick out of being able to “draw” this creature on the computer!
They’ll then be prompted to name their creature and write their first report about their new animal.
Typically after logging in, they will be taken to “My Zoo” dashboard, and they’ll be met with some sort of drawing or creative writing prompt, which they can either choose to accept or dismiss.
From their dashboard, they can explore the different areas of their zoo and complete age-appropriate writing challenges and activities using their creatures. They can also navigate to the activities tab for video lessons, projects, games, challenges, and more.
Night Zookeeper Activities and Lessons
Under activities, you’ll find sections broken up into Interactive lessons, Writing Activities, Challenges, Games, and Projects.
Interactive Lessons
In this section, your kids will receive interactive lessons (two each week) where they’ll learn new writing skills.
For example, some of the lessons my daughter has in her queue are:
- Writing Animal Reports
- Endings with the Guardians (learning how to write an ending to a story)
- Drawing with Buzz (tips for drawing with the Night Zookeeper tools – not writing, but fun!)
- Opinion with Ninja Leaf (working on opinion writing) and
- Perfect Punctuation with Ant
As for the interactive part, as students work through the lessons they’ll answer prompts and receive both positive feedback and constructive criticism from Night Zookeeper tutors.
Writing Activities
In your child’s writing section, they can complete optional monthly competitions (for prizes!), keep a reading log, and review books they’ve read.
Students can filter activities by which type of writing they want to work on: stories, newspaper reports, reports, poems, persuasive writing, or diary entries.
Once they choose an activity, they are given prompts to help them get started (if needed), and goals for their writing. For example, during a poem writing activity, my daughter was encouraged to use at least one adverb, one adjective, and write more than 40 words in her poem.
Challenges
Each child will have interactive challenges given to them based on their age and the grade level at which they are learning. These are designed specifically to help them grow as readers and writers, and improve their skills.
There are a lot of different challenge options, all geared towards giving your child the basic foundation they need for reading and writing. As they grow in their learning, challenges will increase in difficulty, and students will continue to work on areas that they have not yet mastered.
Games
This section of the program offers kids the chance to play the Game of the Week, and compete against other Night Zookeepers for the highest score. The level of the games can be adjusted to each child’s writing ability level.
In addition to the Game of the Week, there is a variety of other educational word games they can play, including live games against others and even some typing challenges.
Projects
Finally, kids can participate in Night Zookeeper “projects” where they submit ideas to writing prompts and have the option to interact with other students and their writing.
This area can be a great way for kids to connect with others who have similar interests, and be inspired to write about different topics. Even when commenting on others’ work, they are given creative prompts (“Congratulate them on their writing”, “Write a comment you would like to receive”, or “Write your comment as a poem”).
As you can see, there are a lot of valuable resources packed into the Night Zookeeper program to encourage and inspire all kids in their writing, no matter their current ability (or interest) level.
Personalized Feedback
As students complete their writing assignments, challenges and activities, they’ll receive personalized feedback from the Night Zookeeper tutors.
Here’s an example of some specific, personalized feedback my daughter received the day after she submitted an assignment:
Once feedback is given on a child’s work, they can go back and edit their work which helps them build their skills (and hopefully remember not to make the same mistakes in the future).
Using Night Zookeeper as a Curriculum
Night Zookeeper is a great option for your homeschool writing and full language arts curriculum (it’s even great for classroom use if you are a teacher or leading a co-op). As you’ve seen, there are so many features and activities available in this program that if your kids are logging in and completing any of the activities, they will get beneficial practice in their reading, writing, and grammar skills.
However, it is recommended that your kids log in at minimum twice a week to specifically complete their lessons. Once they log in, they’ll navigate to the activities tab to find these.
It would also be beneficial to make sure your kids check their messages from the Night Zookeeper tutors, and make any recommended improvements to their writing.
Aside from that, there is a lot of flexibility with how you might structure your school day using Night Zookeeper. There is not a specific schedule you need to follow, so you can choose to let your child play the program once their lessons are finished, or assign different sections on different days.
As an example, you could set a schedule like this: Monday and Tuesday might be lesson days, Wednesday they would choose a writing activity to complete, Thursday a project or challenge, and Friday would be game day.
Although you can go in and pick specific games, challenges, or writing assignments based on what you want your child to work on, keep in mind that in whatever they are working on, they will receive personalized feedback from tutors. Also, the activities will progressively increase in difficulty as they improve and learn all the reading and writing basics they need.
What We Love Most About Night Zookeeper
There were many things we personally loved immediately about Night Zookeeper, and the more we explored, the more we liked!
Here are a few of my favorite features, and things that are important and beneficial to me as a homeschool mom:
Art incorporation. I know this is primarily a writing program, but the drawing aspect is just too much fun! My daughter loved getting to try something new, as she had never done “art” on the computer before. It was inspiring to her to be able to see creations other kids had made as well.
Productive screen time. My kids love video games, and the gamified aspects of this curriculum makes it really engaging for many kids. It’s great to know that they are learning so much during their screen time with Night Zookeeper.
Personalized feedback. I love the fact that I don’t have to grade or give suggestions on every piece of writing – the Night Zookeeper tutors take care of this for me, and encourage my kids to improve their writing since they receive extra rewards for doing it (less nagging from me!).
Skill progression. Kids are given goals to try to achieve with their writing, and they will have the chance to practice them until mastered. As they move through the program and develop their writing skills, their tasks will automatically become more challenging.
Community and safety considerations. There is a “class blog” section where students can follow their friends, and read writing assignments submitted by other students. It’s an excellent way to interact with others and practice constructive criticism (both giving and receiving!) as they can also leave comments on others’ writing. All content that comes through the platform (writing, drawing, and comments) are moderated to keep it a safe space for kids, and you can adjust settings for privacy via the parent dashboard.
Parent Dashboard. The dashboard is very easy to navigate with a lot of helpful resources at your fingertips. You can quickly view your child’s progress through the program, including completed writing activities, challenges, and more. You’ll also be able to see exactly which lessons your child has begun and completed each week, and their recent learning areas. This is also where you have a lot of control over privacy and safety features.
Other Considerations
To access Night Zookeeper, you don’t need much! Night Zookeeper works on pretty much all laptops, iPads, and Chromebooks. You’ll want to make sure you are using Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox for your browser, as it doesn’t work well on Internet Explorer.
We found it helpful to have a touchscreen for the drawing aspects of the program, and my daughter used a stylus for this. This is not a requirement, but it might be helpful!
Also, with the amount of typing involved, it would be a good idea to add some typing lessons to your homeschool to complement this program.
Try Night Zookeeper for FREE
If you’ve been looking for an online language arts program, Night Zookeeper could be a great addition to your homeschool. The only way you’ll know is if you give it a try and see if it’s a good fit!
Blessed Homeschool readers can get a free 7-day trial, and then 50% off your Night Zookeeper annual subscription if you love it (I’m pretty sure you will!).
Get ready to see your child inspired to read and write more as they step into the Night Zoo and spark their imagination.
Any questions? Drop a comment below – I’m happy to help, and would also love to hear what your kids love about Night Zookeeper!
Related Posts
- How to Write a Book Report (+ a FREE Step-by-Step Printable for Your Kids)
- 11 Creative Writing Tips for Kids That Will Encourage Imagination
- Creative Workbooks That Build Good Handwriting and Writing Skills
what is the monthly payment for this? And will it work on my desktop computer? Thank you!
Hi Erica! I actually prefer this on a desktop computer, although I know it can be used with multiple devices.
After the free trial offer, it’s $5 a month if you use the link in this post (this is 50% off the typical price). You pay as a one-time single payment of $59.99. Hope this helps!