We’ve launched a fun and festive colouring in competition just in time for the holidays.

The winner will receive £50 of Usborne books.

How to enter.

Colour in this downloadable picture and email your entries to [email protected] by 31st December 2014.

Rich Wake, the wonderful illustrator for Teach Your Monster to Read will judge the entries. We’re looking for the most colourful designs!

For competition terms and conditions go to: www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/legals

The team at Teach Your Monster to Read would like to wish all our players (monsters) a very merry christmas!

This colourful phonics activity was found on Jenae’s www.icanteachmychild.com resource site.

This activity is about about sorting words that contain digraphs: /th/, /sh/and /ch/. It also includes decodable words like ‘that’ and ‘ship’ and tricky words like ‘the’ and ‘she’.

Find out how to crreate this phonics resource here at www.icanteachmychild.com

We’re asking teachers to join us for a 45 minute phone call where we’ll ask you a few questions about how you teach reading in school.

The research will help the Teach Your Monster to Read team to think about future developments and resources.

We’re giving £100 of Usborne books to those schools that can help us. If you are interested in joining this research project and have availability in January 2015 then email [email protected]

N.B. We’d also like to talk to teachers who do not currently use Teach Your Monster to Read in school so please pass on to any teachers who might like to help us with this research.

We’re proud to announce that Teach Your Monster to Read has reached 2 million game plays!

This is fantastic news for the Usborne Foundation because we know the game is helping more and more children learn to read.

Thank you to everyone who has played the game and we hope you’ll share this free online reading game with other parents and teachers.

Another simple, eye-catching phonics resource is the classroom phonics tree.

Thanks to Kirsten Baxter for the link on Pinterest:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/296956169150714382

Monster Tip: You can create a ‘Tricky Word’ tree for your classroom too.

Download our Teach Your Monster to Read colouring in sheet and create your own monster at home. Download the file by clicking this link: Monster Printable.

We’d love to see your homemade monsters! Share them on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Teach Your Monster to Read will be heading to London, Manchester and Cardiff with Save the Children to share and celebrate the magic of reading!

These free reading events will offer lots of fun activities for families; including storytelling, poetry and a treasure hunt hosted by some of the nation’s most famous faces, authors and illustrators.

There will be interactive sessions with Teach Your Monster to Read where children can play the game on iPads, win Usborne books and meet the monster himself!

We cannot wait to introduce the monster to our fans!

Join in the fun at a shopping centre near you:

Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th October
Westfield Stratford City
Thursday 30th October
Wales Millennium Centre
Saturday 1st November
Manchester Trafford Centre
To read more about Save the Children’s campaign to get all children reading well by the age of 11 go to: www.readongeton.org.uk

Teach Your Monster to Read is looking for a person to dress up as a fun and friendly monster for an event in Cardiff (Thursday 30th October) and Manchester (Saturday 1st November). The actor should have an up-to-date DBS check and have experience working with children. Must be between 5’7-5’10 to fit in the costume. Please email [email protected] with details of your relevant experience. This is a paid job and will be a fantastic event, encouraging children to learn to read!

This is a great starter for those children who are beginning their reading journey.

Create a phonics flip chart from a notebook and use it to help children sound out words.

For more information about this resource and others go to the Kids Activities Blog.

Reading is the key to a child’s future: it unlocks their potential and opens up a world filled with possibilities.

And for our poorest children reading well is their best route out of poverty: they do better at school, better in the workplace and are better placed to give their own children the best start in life.

However, every year in the UK, 130,000 children leave primary school not reading as well as they should. This figure includes 40% of all children from poorer backgrounds – a shockingly high proportion. (Figures from Save the Children’s report – Read On. Get On. How reading can help children escape poverty.)

This means over the next decade almost 1.5 million children will start secondary school already behind, and with likely consequences for their future.

Teach Your Monster to Read is one of the partners launching Read On. Get On. – a reading campaign driven by a coalition of organisations, communities, parents and schools, businesspeople, media and politicians. Organisations include Save the Children UK, Booktrust, The Reading Agency, Beanstalk, NAHT and National Literacy Trust.

Read On. Get On. is a campaign that will encourage all of us to play our part.

Everyone can do something – just ten minutes a day reading with a child makes a huge difference and helps them fall in love with reading. Children who don’t enjoy reading are ten times more likely to fall behind by the age 11.

We can’t afford to fail. Join us today.

For more information go to www.readongeton.org.uk and sign the petition to get politicians behind this campaign.