Do you know your trouser trumpets from your booty bubblers? A Kickstarter project with a naughty twist has been launched this week by a team from the Isle of Wight and Southampton.
Lairytales are a series of stories that encourage children to experiment with language and learning through the Lairies – wicked little creatures with some really horrible habits.
Author, Ali Lanning, wants to use the fascination children have with the ickier side of language to create deeper engagement with stories.
Ali says:
“It wasn’t until I began reading Lairytales to my daughter and saw her recognise and read the naughtier words that I started thinking about the impact this could have on learning.”
This realisation created the philosophy that underpins the Lairies and Lairytales: Laughter isn’t just good for the soul; it makes learning easier. In fact, research suggests that humour produces psychological and physiological benefits that actively help children to learn.
Ali continues:
“A few years later I became frustrated that the funny children’s books my daughter loved often lacked the support for parents and helpers that the books she brought home from school included. I wanted to fix that.”
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Now, both the books and app include teacher-approved support material, to give kids a giggle and help parents maximise learning opportunities.
The stories feature contextual learning prompts, help with tricky words and create your own Lairy feature and story personalisation. Additionally, the ad-free app will include interactive characters and lots of nasty noises.
The concept, stories and app have already had the seal of approval from kids in Hythe and the Isle of Wight during a number of user testing workshops, when children had lots of fun getting involved in the stories and creating their own characters.
The rest of the team behind Lairytales are illustrator, Dan Maxwell, and software engineer, Kieron Lanning.
The campaign, which runs until 4th November 2016, aims to raise £10,000 to fund the first print run of books for Series 1, as well as completion of the first release of the app, which will be available for iPhone, iPad and Android. Already £1,500 has been raised.
Pledges start at £3, and £25 will get you the app plus your very own first print-run edition of the Lairytale: Parp and the Secret Stink, numbered and signed by the whole team.
Pledges can be made at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/appylab/lairytales-wickedly-wonderful-stories-for-creative.
