Free mental maths practice for kids
Sums Copybook is a free, ad-free mental maths game for primary school children. It covers times tables, division, number bonds, adding, taking away, place value and rounding. The difference from a flashcard drill is that every sum belongs to a named strategy, and the strategy is what your child practises. The answer comes from the thinking, not from memorising one pair of numbers.
What it covers
- Adding: pairs that make ten, doubles, near doubles, bridging through ten, pairs that make 100, add ten then adjust.
- Taking away: count up to take away, back through ten, take ten then adjust.
- Place value: splitting into tens and ones, multiplying by ten.
- Times tables: equal groups, turn-around facts, doubling for ×2, ×4 and ×8, five is half of ten, nine is ten take one, threes and sixes, and breaking a fact apart (7 × 8 = 5 × 8 + 2 × 8).
- Division: division as multiplying backwards, finding the missing factor in a times fact.
- Rounding and estimating: rounding to the nearest ten and hundred on a number line.
How a session works
Each session is ten questions and takes five to ten minutes. The first session starts with a short placement round to find your child's level. After that, a new strategy first appears as a fully worked example with only the answer missing, and the steps fade away one at a time as your child gets it right. Sessions mix strategies together so your child has to choose the right method each time, and strategies that are already fluent come back on a spaced schedule so they stick.
Ten-frames, number lines and arrays show why a strategy works while it is still new, then drop away. When your child makes a common mistake, such as adding a group instead of taking one away for ×9, the game names the mistake instead of just marking it wrong.
Example: 7 × 9 using "nine is ten take one"
7 × 10 = 70. That is one group of 7 too many, so 70 − 7 = 63. The same thinking works for every nine times table fact, so your child learns one strategy rather than ten separate answers.
For parents and teachers
The grown-ups panel (the ⚙ button at the top) shows each strategy as New, Building or Fluent, along with accuracy and how much scaffolding is still showing. There are no accounts, adverts or tracking, and progress is saved only on this device. It is free for home and classroom use. For telling the time, try Tick Tock Quest, the clock game. The approach page sets out the research behind the design.