How to help
Six things that make more difference than which activity you pick.
This page exists because of a specific finding. A 2024 review of 25 maths programmes delivered by parents at home found a modest average benefit — and that the benefit depended on whether the adult got any guidance and follow-up. Handing over good materials with no guidance is the version that barely works. So here is the guidance.
1. Short and often, not long and occasional
Ten minutes, a few times a week, for a few weeks. In the early-numeracy trials, the programmes with the largest effects were eight weeks or shorter. Long diffuse practice is not the thing that works.
2. Say why, not just right or wrong
This is the single easiest win available to you. Feedback that explains is worth roughly ten times feedback that only says correct or incorrect — and the gap is larger in maths than in any other subject. Every activity shows the working after an answer. Read it together instead of clicking on.
3. When they are stuck, give the strategy, not the answer
Every game names a strategy before it starts, and keeps it one tap away. Practice with a named strategy is dramatically more useful than the same practice without one — a bigger difference than anything to do with speed or timing. So the useful prompt is “what did we say about counting on?” rather than “it’s seven”.
4. Books first, games second
Books are for learning something and are never timed. Games are for getting quicker at something already learned. Doing it in that order matters: practising speed on something not yet understood is the thing the research warns against most directly.
5. Print the same problems again later
Every activity prints. Doing the same page on paper a few days later is worth more than doing twice as much today. There is also a mixed review sheet on every print page — eight problems (five for the youngest two grades) shuffled so no two in a row use the same method. It will feel harder and it is meant to. In a trial of 787 children, shuffled sheets scored 61% against 38% for the same problems grouped by type, on a test a month later.
6. Do not compare them to anyone
There are no leaderboards or percentiles here, on purpose. Maths anxiety is real, it is measurable, and counterintuitively it affects capable children at least as much. The evidence on reducing it is unglamorous: building competence lowers anxiety. Comparison does not.
A realistic expectation
The best-evidenced digital maths programmes, tested on thousands of children, move attainment by a small amount — not by a grade level. Anything promising more than that is overselling. What this site is for is regular, sensible, well-chosen practice that is free and does not waste your child’s time.