Josh visits Harvest School in Bangalore. It was another hot day in Bangalore and I had awoken early, after flying in from a short trip to Kerala the evening before. I was with my wife Ishani, and together we made our way across the city from my in-law’s house to Harvest International School. Thankfully we were going in the opposite direction of most of the cars and the roads became smaller and windier as we made our way to the outskirts of the city.

While summer doesn’t technically start until June 21st, it sure feels like we’ve entered this blissfully hot season! June is a lovely month because it encapsulates both spring and summer! These seasons bring new plant blossoms, good weather, and smiles! So what better summer treat than to provide some new June Writing Prompts (delivered by Riya!).

Our community of Night Zookeeper teachers is some of the most awesome people around! Follow some of our official Night Zookeeper Teacher Ambassadors below to see how they are using Night Zookeeper and developing a love of writing in their class.

The team here at Night Zookeeper is delighted to be giving primary school children across the UK a unique opportunity to use a new (and free!) website to create characters for a soon-to-launch animated TV series in a world first. Of course, Night Zookeeper is already well-known to school children aged seven and above as an award-winning digital platform that encourages literacy and writing, but soon it’ll also be an animated series on Sky Kids!

How a Primary School Teacher Made Homework Fun. We’re extremely lucky to work with some of the most amazing teachers in the world, as the Night Zookeeper community continues to grow every day! Thanks to the generous sponsorship from Colt Technology, we have been able to work with a new network of schools who perhaps would have been unable to introduce their students to the wonderful world of the Night Zoo.

Throughout the month of November our children were challenged to participate in The International Writing Cup Competition!

With one week left to go of our yearly World Creative Writing Month competition, we have already exceeded three million published words, produced by students around the world! Visit the latest WCWM18 league table by clicking the image below…

Night Zookeeper & Tagtiv8 Workshops and CPD Sessions I’m delighted to announce that Night Zookeeper have partnered with Tagtiv8 to deliver amazing Literacy workshops in schools!

Are you looking for ways to engage your reluctant writer? We recommend that you introduce humor into your teaching and start encouraging laughter. Pairing learning with laughter can be incredibly beneficial for your child’s educational career and general well-being.

There are plenty of reasons to encourage your kids to love creative writing. The skills gained from creative writing ultimately contribute to language mastery. Whether you’re telling a good story, invoking feelings in a poem, or including all the facts in a report, language helps us communicate with other people and connect and share knowledge with them. In essence, when one learns how to write creatively, they are also learning how to better communicate with the world around them. In doing so, encouraging your kids to love creative writing also boosts other key aspects of a child’s development:

We recently set a really exciting Star Writing Challenge. To celebrate the launch of the brand new Night Zoo map, we challenged our young writers to invent a new location for the Night Zoo. To take part, they needed to create a new map location, draw a picture of it and write a short story set in this area of the zoo. This new location will then be added to the brand new Night Zoo map.

Let’s face it. Some children are natural born storytellers with creativity and imagination spilling from their fingers. For them, exploring creative writing is just the beginning of a beautiful journey. However, for some children, getting them to want to write is a tedious and stressful task. While writing might not come naturally to every child, this does not mean that your child can’t eventually learn to really love creative writing! This blog explores how to encourage your child to want to write.

Here’s 7 Fun Word Games to help inspire even the most reluctant readers and writers to start loving creative writing and storytelling. These games focus on improving literacy, language skills and overall enthusiasm for creative writing.

In light of the recent developments surrounding Coronavirus and potential school closures, we want to support families struggling to provide educational activities for their children. That’s why in partnership with IMM’s Care to Create, we set out a very special Star Writing Challenge.

We were absolutely thrilled to see this fantastic end of year performance from a class at the Taipei European School in Taiwan. They explain so well all about Night Zookeeper and the importance of creativity!

How you can help your child with dysgraphia or dyslexia to enjoy writing. Dyslexia and dysgraphia are common learning difficulties experienced by children. It can be incredibly tough to find a program that not only helps encourage a child to love creative writing who struggles with either of these difficulties, but also one that allows them to actually flourish as creative writers! So, the main question is how can we help someone with dysgraphia or dyslexia with their writing so that they can grow to love it? There are plenty of online learning games and options for dyslexia and dysgraphia that can help your child.

We’re excited to be attending Bett 2019 at the ExCel London from January 23rd to 26th! Come visit our stand to get a special free trial of our website nightzookeeper.com, an educational platform that is proven to raise the writing attainment of primary school students.

A school in Norfolk is dramatically improving writing skills. Here’s how. Langham Primary School has been using the digital writing website nightzookeeper.com, for the past three years, with some amazing results.

April sees the beginning of a new league table system for all classes using Night Zookeeper. Our leagues now run for the duration of the month, so that you can award new winners throughout the year!

We are pleased to report a partnership with the Japanese NPO, YouMeWE. Thanks to this fantastic organisation, Night Zookeeper is now being used by children’s homes in Japan, charity schools in the Philippines, and by children from Syria, in refugees camps.

The International Writing Cup is back for another year, with a brand new format! We’re launching a special Writing Triathlon on 1st November 2018. Students will be challenged to write three different pieces of writing that are all linked by the theme of writing an amazing adventure story.

We are thrilled to be working with Picturehouse on a series of family-friendly workshops. Upcoming Dates: Cinema City Picturehouse, Norwich on Sat 27th April at 10.30 am and 2 pm Picturehouse at FACT, Liverpool on Sat 4th May at 10.30 am and 1.30 pm

This blog post contains 5 Top Tips for parents who would like to find out how they can help their children produce their best writing and fall in love with learning on Night Zookeeper. These tips will help to encourage your children to connect with their friends, even though they're at home.

We’ve created a list of fun Halloween writing prompts to help spark your child’s creativity presented by Bertie the Bumbling Bee. 🐝 Some of the Halloween writing prompts listed below inspire kids to engage their imaginations and create a new poems, recipes, thought pieces and short stories. Please feel free to change the type of writing you would like your child to do; the idea is to get them comfortable and in the mood to write!

We’ve created a feature this summer to gamify the process of keeping a reading record. We think this will have a huge impact on student motivation levels as they are rewarded in their Night Zoo account for the amount of reading they are doing ‘offline’.

In light of the recent developments surrounding Coronavirus and potential school closures, we wanted to help support families struggling to provide educational activities for their children. For the children, we wanted to provide them with a creative outlet to express their feelings during a complicated time. We understood that having to stay at home and not see friends, family and loved ones could feel lonely for them. However, by staying home, it helped to make sure other people who need help can get it. That’s why in partnership with IMM’s Care to Create and printed.com, we set out a very special Star Writing Challenge.

The Night Zookeeper team are visiting schools all over the UK gathering fantastic ideas for the new animated series on Sky TV

Throughout March, we asked students to write about their favourite subject, topic, or interest that they were incredibly passionate about.

This week, our Night Zookeeper Teacher in the spotlight is Matt Peebles. Matt is a fourth-grade teacher based in Illinois who has been using Night Zookeeper with his students for the last couple of months.

This week, we are challenging students to invent a new location for the Night Zoo. They should use their imagination to invent a new environment to fit into the Night Zoo map as seen above.

We recently had great fun with a group children from St Mary Magdalen’s Catholic Primary School in Mortlake when we joined them on a visit to a BAFTA and Emmy award-winning animation studio where they became animators for the day and saw their drawn creations come to life.

World Creative Writing Month was back for another year, starting March 1, 2021. This exciting competition challenged children to write as many stories as possible throughout the month. The very best writing was showcased each week with prizes up for grabs!

Calling all aspiring writers – the latest Star Writing Challenge is up today! We would like your students to write a 1000 word story about their own adventure in the Night Zoo. Once they step through the magical gates, where will they go and who will they meet?

We’re very excited to announce that we are able to offer 140 schools the chance to use Night Zookeeper for the year, free of charge. This fantastic opportunity has been made possible by sponsorship from COLT Technology Services, who provide network and voice services to Europe, North America, and Asia.