A relatively new site which has come to my attention recently is mangahigh.com. Aimed at High School students, this would only be appropriate to older primary children with a good mathematical knowledge.

A great free game to try out would be Ice Ice Maybe on estimation which is well within the range of older primary children – but watch out, it might prove addictive!

The aim of the site is to intrigue and interest students with high quality games whilst at the same time introducing new maths concepts. The repetition within playing the game leads to knowledge and success in exams.

As they say:
“Mangahigh’s unique game-based learning system brings out the mathematician in ALL students who love games.”

The games are certainly of a high standard, equal to many of the best on-line games and will almost certainly be attractive to High School students.

The games award students for success but more than this, it has a ‘learning engine’ that includes thousands of maths problems with worked answers.

Mangahigh covers all of the lessons required to score highly at Foundation and Higher Maths GCSE exams, and the questions and content are matched to teaching goals for all the major UK exam boards.

The people behind mangahigh certainly give it credibility: Ian Livingstone of Livingstone and Jackson Dungeons and Dragons and White Dwarf magazine as well as Marcus Du Sautoy, Professor of Maths at Oxford and Toby Rowland of King.com.

Starting at £4.85 a month if subscribing for a year there are many worse ways of spending your money on your children.

Originally designed for children in Early Years it is now used extensively by many teachers in Key Stage 2 as it can be used for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division as well as other arithmetic operations.

To get the best use of the resources there are a number of videos available on the site which are well worth looking at, as this approach breaks the restrictive trends of the Numeracy Strategy; always a good thing!

They also have a number of free resources for primary children (aged 5 – 11) to put on the wall at home at:

http://www.numicon.com/display_resources.html

If you are looking for a different approach to maths or have a child who is really struggling with understanding number then I would certainly recommend this site.

Numicon

Mychild is a website for parents. It offers a huge amount of help including parenting advice, worksheets and resources. Some of these are free but they also offer a subscription service. Whilst this isn’t cheap it does come with some excellent resources across the curriculum and includes magazines and CDs. This costs £86 for one year, but you can get an excellent starter pack of books and CDs for £9.00 (currently valued at over £190) to review for 10 days. If you don’t want it, then by returning within 10 days will ensure that your money is returned. You can’t ask for more than that.

Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but many parents do find this a valuable site.

Topmarks.co.uk

Topmarks Education has had a presence on the web for over 9 years, being launched in September 1998 by Chris and Sue Spolton.
It has three main aims:
1. To provide easy access to the best educational websites
2. To help teachers use the web in the classroom
3. To support parents who want to help their children.
Going right through from the earliest years to Higher Education it is a huge bank of links to other sites which provide free resources. Not just maths but just about every subject you could think of.
It is well organised into subject areas on the Home Page. Choose your subject (Maths obviously!) and there is a dropdown menu for choosing the appropriate age range. With over 70 sites to look at just for maths it is certainly a site you would want to bookmark and come back to.

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Are you spending tedious hours trying to get your children to learn their tables? Would you like to get your children pleading to learn their tables? Well if the Timez Attack blurb is true to its word your kids will love this. Coming from the Big Brainz site, they obviously like their zzzzs!

The Timez Attack base version is a free download of about 43 MB consisting of a high-tech and entertaining video game aimed at improving tables. Graphics are excellent, on a par with many video games. Your children will probably find their way around far better than you as they explore the dungeon and overcome monsters, at first to master their two times table.

The thinking behind this is that children have to be 100% accurate in their answers before they can move on – there is no room for error in the final test! Certainly I can see how it would improve tables learning and would recommend it for any child who likes gaming but does not know their tables.

One slight criticism – if a number is keyed in incorrectly it is impossible to change it. If this is done at the final challenge it will mean going back and repeating a section again. Nothing much wrong with this apart from it does not permit corrections.

Overall, excellent. There is a full version which can be downloaded for $39.99. The only difference between this and the free version is that there are a selection of extra cool environments such as the Machine World to play the game in. Start with the free stuff and make your own mind up.

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Mathszone.

A commendable idea: to collect a variety of free games and activities from different sites which can be used for teaching maths in school or at home. Organised into 9 categories:
Use and apply maths
Count and understand
Number facts, add and subtract
Number facts, multiply and divide
Calculating, add and subtract
Calculating, multiply and divide
Shape
Measuring
Handling data.

Or for those who prefer, activities are organised by the Key Objectives of the Numeracy Strategy.

Many games from a variety of sources are included, including games from Ambleside school, Gareth’s Primary Resources, Crick software etc.
Unfortunately, because it essentially a link to other sites the games come in all kinds of format, some are Flash, some Shockwave, some Java. Some have explanations on how to play, some don’t. Some have rewards, some seem to play for ever, repeating endlessly. Also I imagine that this might be a nightmare to keep up to date as the original sites change and links change.
If you are looking for a game on a particular aspect of maths it is probably worthwhile having a quick look at this but it could prove to be ultimately disappointing. However, on the good side, it does take you to a variety of maths websites which are worth looking at.

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atschool has been around for some years now. It covers KS1 and KS2 in a range of areas or ‘classrooms’ as they are known. It does have a lot of material on the site, not just maths, and there is a small amount of material which you can freely access. Most, however, is only available if you subscribe.
Many of the maths activities are in the style of an interactive worksheet where you fill in answers on the screen. There are options to have the work marked, to show correct answers, to try the again or to print the activity –all very good ideas.
The graphics and sounds overwhelm on the front pages of the site, and I was expecting plenty of ‘whizz-bang’ in the activities themselves; but they tend to be rather plain and a little disappointing. Certainly the maths content is thorough but I did not feel excited enough to play any activity more than the once.
A quarterly subscription only costs £9.99 and an annual subscription just £29.99. Considering the range of subjects available I would consider this very good value, especially if you want help in more than just maths and are looking for links to good sites and interesting material.
If you are browsing for free content then there are far too many links which do not work unless you have subscribed – I even couldn’t use the Amazon link on their Top Ten lists. However it does show you the range and quantity of material available if you subscribe. Other than maths there are English, Science, Geography, D&T, ICT, History, Music, Art, RE, PE and PSHE.

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Interesting idea – a place for parents, grandparents and carers to share video clips about how to help children with their maths homework. This is a prototype site which will be up and running for just 4 months to begin with. It is organised into year groups (just like this blog!) but not all year groups are covered yet. In year 4 there are some good ideas on how to use playing cards to learn tables. Well worth a quick visit and it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Difficult to rate this site yet as it is so new, but have given it a temporary score and will adjust as it progresses.

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Now I know that this is an excellent dictionary as I have used it before – great graphics and clear explanations – but over £100 seems rather expensive. And it seems even more expensive when I can access it free of charge at A Maths Dictionary for Kids by Jenny Eather.

Is it the same dictionary? As far as I could tell it was, but I emailed Cambridge-Hitachi to make sure. They kindly answered to say that the dictionary was fully revised for the UK maths curriculum so that when schools purchase the CD they can be confident that the content complies with the Primary Framework for Maths. They also stated that the CD is independent of a broadband connection, making it more reliable than when accessing it from the website. Hmmm…. £100 more reliable?

So I am reviewing this as the free resource, with all its idiosyncratic Australian maths! I might review the CD later, but it might not get such a good score!!

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