Maths where the game is the maths

What makes it different

1. Numbers you build

   In most maths apps the fun is a costume over a quiz. Here the numbers are the things you play with. A gap 23 by 47 only fits a 23 by 47 rectangle, and a wrong size visibly does not fit.

   

2. Taught before it is practised

   Every new idea starts on a picture, such as groups pushed together into rows, with the words spoken aloud. Practice then moves to plain numbers. In fact practice, a wrong answer is followed by the way to work it out.

   

3. Facts that belong together

   7 × 8, 8 × 7, 56 ÷ 7, and 56 ÷ 8 are one family, learned as one. Facts are worked out from ones already known, then practised a little each day, spaced out and mixed up, until they are instant.

   

4. Speed without a stopwatch

   The app notes how long each answer takes, silently, and practice has no countdown. The only clocks a child sees are a one-minute check at the start and once a week, framed as a look at how they are getting on, and sprints they choose, which give a count but no feedback on each question. In fact practice, a wrong answer is followed by the way to work it out, and the child types the right answer back once. Straight after a lesson, that waits until the end of the set.

   

5. One child, not a year group

   Nothing opens by age or year. A new step opens when the steps under it are mastered, so a child can race ahead in one area and take longer in another. Parents see what was learned and how it is coming along, never a comparison with other children.

   

What it does not do

• No countdown timers in practice.
• No coins, shops, leaderboards, or badges for playing longer.
• No ads, no trackers, and no third-party scripts.
• Your data is never sold.

Built on the research

The design is built on peer-reviewed studies and national practice guides. Where the evidence is thin, or a number is a starting value still to be tuned, the plan says so. The reviews set it out:

• How 9-year-olds become fluent in math facts, and how to practice without inducing math anxiety
• Teaching Math Concepts to 9-Year-Olds with Visual Models, Animation and Explanation: Evidence Review
• Making a Math App Genuinely Fun for a 9-Year-Old: Literature Review
• Adaptive Learning, Mastery, Knowledge Tracing and Feedback for a Solo-Built Math App (age 9)
• Competitive Landscape: Math Learning Apps for Ages 8-11 (Grades 3-5)
• Attention, ADHD, and math practice: what the evidence says for a fluency and learning app
• General learning science for Numberkit (how people learn and remember, beyond games and apps)
• How people learn mathematics: evidence from cognition and classrooms, and what an app can take from it
• What Effective Human Teaching and Tutoring Do, and What an App Can Take From Them
• Motivation, Emotion, and Habits in Learning Mathematics
• Calibrating and evaluating Numberkit with very few learners

For parents and schools

• A child's profile holds a first name or nickname, a school year, a picture PIN, and their progress. A parent can also add names of family, friends, or pets to appear in word problems. No date of birth, no email address, and nothing a child types freely.
• Parents can download everything their family has stored, and delete it. Deleted data is erased at the nightly clean-up 30 days after the request, and is gone from the database's short-term backups within a day after that.
• Numberkit runs on Vercel and keeps its data with Neon, both in London. Sign-in email goes through Resend, in Ireland. No one else receives your data.
• An address left in the invite box is used only to send an invite. It is deleted after 90 days if no invite is sent.

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