Night Zookeeper for Homeschoolers Review | Perfect for Reluctant Writers!

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As homeschool parents, we’re always on the lookout for fun ways to encourage our kids to pursue furthering their skills and promoting great educational content.

Personally, my nine-year-old is a reluctant writer. She is extremely smart, excels above her grade level most of the time, and has reading comprehension scores that are off the charts. But when it comes to creative writing, she struggles.

My seven year old, well, he’s all boy and overwhelmingly Mr. Bare Minimum.

The Reluctant Writer and Mr. Bare Minimum 100% enveloped in their first Night Zookeeper experience.

I share our personal story of using Night Zookeeper and why we think it’s the perfect writing program for homeschoolers!

I say this in all honesty, adding Night Zookeeper to our homeschool has been a welcomed adjustment to our routine!

By using their interactive writing games and online writing curriculum, I’ve seen a difference in my own kids, and I know you will too!

Night Zookeeper for Homeschoolers Review

I know it’s a popular thing, and I’m not knocking it, but I’m not much on gameschooling. We use board games and cards in our homeschool, but most game schooling options are computer or video based.

As a limited screen time family, that much tech doesn’t always work for us. But, for this program, we make an exception!

What is NightZookeeper?

closeup look at the creation of a magic animal on Night Zookeeper
Her first animal creation on Night Zookeeper!

Night Zookeeper is an award winning and award winning creative writing platform that helps improve the writing skills of 5-12+ year olds.

They encourage reading comprehension through fun, visual, stories and lessons that introduce new vocabulary words and encourage children to put them to use through games, challenges, and writing assignments.

Night Zookeeper is more like an interactive online full curriculum, which makes it great for virtual learning. However, Night Zookeeper has three amazing key elements that sets them apart from other options.

What does Night Zookeeper offer?

  • Opportunity to improved core writing skills. 
  • Weekly, interactive video elements and games to teach your children key skills.
  • Competitions that offer REAL prizes!
  • Publishing opportunities.
  • FREEBIES! Monthly educational printables.
Night Zookeeper Review

How much does Night Zookeeper cost?

You can get the Night Zookeeper online language arts program for 50% off when you use our referral link. It automatically applies our tailored coupon code!

By using this link, you can get Night Zookeeper for $59.99/year for a single child subscription, or the family plan that includes 2-3 students for $77.99/year!

For more than 3 students, contact the Night Zookeeper support team to get a prorated price.

Night. Zookeeper is also available for classroom use! Simply click here and contact them for a price that is fit for your classroom size.

What English, Language Arts elements does Night Zookeeper work on improving?

Through remote learning and video lessons, you can expect your students to improve upon their language arts skills with writing prompts, games, challenges and writing assignments.

Important areas of concentration that Night Zookeeper focuses on:

  • Encouraging Fluent Readers
  • Flourishing Creative Writers
  • Elements and Parts of Speech
  • Proper Grammar and Punctuation
  • Excelled Reading Comprehension

Three Key Elements of Night Zookeeper That Are Great for Homeschoolers.

The Night Zookeeper program is actually set up more like an interactive curriculum. Its features work more like a game, so kids feel like they’re “winning” while they’re actually learning- sneaky huh?

kids sitting together on the sofa playing Night Zookeeper on a tablet.
This was NOT a staged photo. This is just how interested everyone was in Night Zookeeper!

Check out the top three reasons why we think Night Zookeeper is a great writing program for homeschoolers.

1. Have your child’s work reviewed by live, human, tutors.

This is one of the most vital elements of the Night Zookeeper writing program. Having your child’s writing “graded” by real people who have a background or history in writing is a key element for success that this program offers.

Each piece of work that is turned in can be sent to tutors for personalized instant feedback and advice.

Night Zookeeper tutor feedback includes anything from positive feedback and encouragement to correcting spelling, punctuation errors, and proper sentence structure. With this personalization, you can be confident in knowing that your student is receiving a great opportunity to better their writing.

Not only is this tutor feedback golden, but students are encouraged to go back and edit their work for accuracy. Doing so, gives them extra rewards!

This perk ensures that kids fully understand their mistakes and are less likely to make them again- creating children who make major improvements!

2. Student Community

You can choose to have your writing shared on your child’s team blog. There, other children are invited to read and leave comments to encourage or help each other.

This can be a great way for your child to be shown the work of other “authors” at their age and level, encouraging them to write better and work harder!

While all writing/comments are moderated by the Night Zookeeper editors, this community function is completely optional. You can disable this feature completely or moderate it to your choosing in your parent dashboard and it will not be accessible via the child log.

3. World-Wide Competitions

Night Zookeeper provides challenges, competitions, and publishing opportunities for kids all over the globe. Boosting any reluctant writers resolve to do better and emboldening them to showcase their progress.

Every month, Night Zookeeper has their own writing competitions that students can participate in. But they also have yearly competitions like the International Writing Cup!

Weekly, students can participate in the “Star Writing” competitions by clicking the button on their dashboard to see what the new prompt is, and then click “Write” to take part.

When your child participates in the Night Zookeeper games, they can also be featured on the World Leaderboard which includes challengers from around the world!

Overall, Why is Night Zookeeper Great for Homeschoolers? – our personal story.

We shared three key elements that make Night Zookeeper a great option for homeschool families. The program prides itself on growing a richer vocabulary, developing grammar skills, and improving creative writing, but how did it work for our own family?

Fourth Grader

I have an extremely smart nine-year old who is always carrying around a book. She has loved reading since she was very young, reads above her grade level, and her reading comprehension is crazy amazing.

But as she’s grown, her imagination is crafted through the stories that she’s read and not so much of her own creations. She struggles writing, crafting stories, and even conveying her thoughts through written words.

But within hours, really within mere minutes, of using the Night Zookeeper program, I could see the spark ignite within her to trade her reluctancy to writing for a desire to write and a captivating love of writing.

Closeup of a tablet with children gathered playing Night Zookeeper
All four kids are picled in this picture watching my fourth grader play Night Zookeeper!

Second Grader

Woo. This one is a doozy! My seven year old son is a wild thing. He can’t sit still- even when playing his allotted time for video games/screen time. For school, we have to let him fidget and we’ve been working so hard on his near non-existent reading comprehension.

Overall, he enjoys reading. But its definitely a struggle to get him to pay attention for extended period of time. And when I say extended periods, I mean more than 7 or 8 minutes.

But, when we introduced him to the Night Zookeeper program, I could see him perk up as he discovered that reading and writing could be fun!

Tips for getting the best results from your Night Zookeeper Subscription

  • Night Zookeeper is best for ages 6-12 and each child account is tailored to the age of the child, but parents can also adjust the difficulty level. Get more out of your subscription by allowing younger students to watch the age-appropriate students work. This is a great way to encourage reading and writing at a young age!
  • Make use of the parent dashboard. There are so many customization options and progress trackers that you should use to help you understand your child’s progress and needs.
  • Use Night Zookeeper often. I know, I know- I’m not a big fan of screen time either, but this program is truly so valuable. Night Zookeeper encourages at least 30 minutes a week to get the best out of the program. This will give them time to complete their weekly assignments and check feedback from their tutors. But, by allowing them a few hours a week, they have the opportunity to explore, play, and really take advantage of what Night Zookeeper can offer.
  • Night Zookeeper can be used on the go! Use it on your home computer, laptop, or even tablet for anytime access!
  • Use our referral link to get 50% off your annual subscription! Start with the free trial and then use this link https://bit.ly/3n2oOZY (it automatically applies our exclusive Night Zookeeper coupon code) to upgrade to the yearly subscription for HALF OFF*!
  • Night Zookeeper covers a full Language Arts curriculum, but can also be used as a supplementary asset. Be sure to take advantage of their Adventure Book Series where kids can learn more about the magical animals from the program!

*With the provided referral links it’s 50% off annual subscriptions. This costs $59.99 for the year for a single child subscription and $77.99 for 2-3 children. More children can be added at a bespoke price. People who sign up, get a free 7-day trial and then get 50% off on the yearly subscription.

This is a sponsored post from Night Zookeeper. All opinions are my own and have not been swayed in any way.