Creating and growing their 'Zoo' is one of the most exciting features of Night Zookeeper - every activity a child does gives them 'light', and each time their light is full they clear some fog on the zoo map and unveil a new 'egg'!

Your child can then transform the egg into any animal or character they can imagine! Once they have drawn their animal, we encourage them to write about it: describing what it looks like, telling us about its character, family, super powers etc.

Challenges are curriculum-linked and aligned with the grade/year group of your child (up to end of elementary/primary school). These progress in difficulty in a pre-defined order, covering a wide range of core literacy topics.

• Zoo/Animal Dens:

  Animals will encourage children to play the next challenge directly from the zoo map but they can also find this challenge in the 'Play' menu within an animal's den (it's the one with the '?' symbol).

• Activities Menu:

  The next challenge is also listed in the activities menu 'For You' row or children can also go to the Challenges row or sub-menu to choose a specific type of challenge if they prefer.

Our games are educational and designed to practice key literacy skills! They use vocabulary/content specific to your child's age and can be played at an 'easy', 'medium' or 'hard' level. Unlike challenges, they're not part of a linear curriculum and the level of difficulty remains consistent.

New lessons are published every week and are carefully designed by our tutors to teach core literacy skills in a fun way. They combine video, quizzes, writing and drawing challenges for a truly interactive experience!

Lessons are suggested via the 'Play' menu in each animal's den but a full list can be found in the Lessons menu within the Activities section. The tags shown on each lesson show you what skills are covered in the lesson or lesson series.

• New Animal Reports:

  Whenever a child creates a new animal they will be encouraged to write about it. They are guided through this process using a dialogue question and answer based system to help inspire them on what to write. When they finish the Q&A based approach they can edit what they have written as a document before submitting it for moderation and review by our tutors.

• Writing Challenges:

  We have a wide range of writing challenges that use a similar question and answer approach to inspire writing. The topics for these can be found in the Writing menu within Activities but these will be suggested regularly on zoo map and one will always be suggested within each Animal Den in the 'Play' menu.

• Free Writing:

  Effectively free writing gives children a blank document to write in with some suggested literacy goals (such as include 2 adjectives or use the phrase 'once in a while').

This is a fantastic way for children to take control and write about whatever interests them. They can choose at the start which type of content they are writing (e.g. a poem, report, story, newspaper article etc). It's great to see the variety of content we receive.

• Uploading offline writing:

  Within free writing, they can also choose 'Upload' to upload a picture of writing they have done by hand offline (please do not upload anything other than pictures of hand written work or hand drawn pictures). Go to Activities -> Writing -> Free Write and upload is the bottom option in the pop-up.

Writing is also included in some lessons, particularly for older children, this uses a question and answer approach similar to writing challenges.

• Star Writing competition

  We also run a Star Writing competition every week, the winning article is shared to all Night Zookeepers in a message and the winner receives 'orbs' that they can use within the Night Zoo as a prize. Topics vary from 'Write about the world's WORST superhero' or 'Write about a magic creature that is half animal, half flower'! For example, this week the challenge is to write about this Rhinopeacock:

In addition to drawing animals, children are given challenges to draw accessories for their animals (e.g. within the 'Play' menu in the animal's den).

Within Lessons, there are also a couple of drawing tutorials from Night Zookeeper Buzz, our lead designer who created all the Night Zookeeper characters and artwork for the books and website. This will help children make best use of our drawing tools.

Aimed at children aged 8 and older (these are hidden by default for younger children), projects provide a space to share writing or drawings on topics that interest them. These topics help to motivate more writing. Everything is moderated, ensuring it remains a safe space.

Before you play:

Every animal in the Night Zoo has it's own skills card. Take a look in the Customise menu in any animal's den. Each time the animal moves up a level it will get a new 'skill point' to add to the skills card to increase the animal's skill in one area. These skills help them in card battles so do encourage children to assign the skill points they win - some of the older children get quite strategic about it!

To win each battle, your child must drag one or more of their animal cards onto the monster. The monsters skill number will decrease by the amount that animal had in that skill. When the skill number reaches zero the monster is defeated! They can use multiple cards to defeat a monster but they lose any card that doesn't defeat a monster (they get to keep any card that wins and can reuse it).

Some of the cards in their hand will be Special Cards, each with its own power. Tap the card to flip the card and read about it's power (on the back). Drag the card onto a monster to use it. They have to answer a literacy question correctly first. More special cards are unlocked as children progress in the Night Zoo, these special cards also get increasingly powerful.

The number of monsters they have to defeat to win extends as children progress in the Night Zoo (up to 15). Some of the monsters will be Bosses which each have their own special power too.