The lesson

One press, one step

A lesson advances only when the child presses. Nothing plays on a timer and nothing runs ahead. The pace is set by the person who has to understand it, which is the whole reason the control is a button and not a video scrubber.

The question comes first, alone

Every lesson opens on the question filling the screen at reading size, narrated, with no working shown. There is nothing to peek at, so reading the question stops being the step everyone skips.

Bar models that draw themselves

The Singapore method — part and whole, comparison, units — animated. A bar splits where the reasoning splits it. Colour carries meaning and is never decorative: blue is the first quantity, orange the second, pink the remainder or the surprise, and green is the answer and nothing else.

Narration on every line

878 pre-recorded clips, shipped with the app rather than spoken by the browser's robot voice. A six-year-old reading English as a second language can follow a whole paper alone. It is one key to turn off.

Figures measured, not sketched

24 questions print a picture — grids of symbols, stacks of cubes, dotted zigzags. Each of those was measured off the printed page and checked pixel by pixel against the scan, because a figure that is nearly right teaches a child to count the wrong thing.

The paper

Seven papers, complete

Six TIMO Heat Round Primary 1 papers, 2020–21 through 2025–26, plus a practice set — 174 questions, every one of them with a lesson. Not a sample, not a selection of the easy ones.

Answers checked against the printed key

Every answer carries a verification note recording how it was confirmed. Where our working disagreed with the paper, the disagreement is written down rather than quietly resolved.

Walk a whole paper without leaving

When a lesson ends the button becomes Next question. Previous and next are in the top bar throughout, so a child can move around a paper without returning to a menu.

The child

Coins, and why watching costs something

Solving a question first time earns the most. Watching the solution halves what the question is worth, each time. Watching is allowed — it is the point of the app — but it is not free, which is what stops it becoming the default.

Their progress stays on the device

Name, coins and which questions are solved live in the browser's own storage. They are not uploaded, not synced, and not visible to us. Clearing the browser's data clears them, which is the honest trade for not holding a child's record on a server.

Nothing in the app phones home

No adverts, no analytics, no third-party scripts. Once a lesson has loaded, no step makes a network request. Sign-in happens on this page, before the app, and is the only part that talks to Google at all.

The grown-up

Sign in with the account you already have

Google sign-in means no new password, and no password of yours in our keeping. We receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google and nothing else — see Privacy.

A way to say something is wrong

The app can capture what is on screen and let a child circle the part that confused them, in their own hand. That is how several real errors in these lessons were found — including one found by a seven-year-old who circled an empty space and wrote "where is the Figure??". She was right, and it was not one question.