Number Skills Overview

From the charity behind the award-winning Teach Your Monster To Read comes Teach Your Monster Number Skills. A research-based mathematics game set in a magical theme park, it boosts kids' confidence with numbers and makes mathematics fun!

• Packed full of fun mini-games for children between 3-6+ years old from pre-k/reception through kindergarten/year 1 and beyond.

• FREE to play on desktop for all users, and free to play for schools on our apps (Apple/Google/Amazon).

• Aligned with US Common Core Standards in Math and the UK National Curriculum.

• Designed in collaboration with three world-renowned, early years mathematics experts: Bernie Westacott, Dr Helen J. Williams and Dr Sue Gifford.

• The game can be played at home or in the classroom.

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A long shot of the Number Skills Theme Park with a submarine in the foreground

How does Teach Your Monster Number Skills work?

• Meet Queenie Bee and her friends as your child explores the magical Number Park!

• The child can customise their monster and take them to play different games in the park.

• 15 fun-filled games offer engaging ways to practice number skills such as addition, subtraction, number bonds, place value, and the foundations of multiplication.

• Focusing on numbers up to 100, each game currently has 10 levels. This makes a total of 150 levels of fun!

• Practice Mode provides additional support to reinforce key number skills with hundreds of extra levels.

What mathematics skills does Teach Your Monster Number Skills cover?

Number Skills is a game designed to help children develop their number sense. This is the ability to use lots of different skills that we don’t always realise are important to judge how many things there are of something. It’s the difference between children when they’re older being able to add up large numbers in their head instead of still struggling to add them up on their fingers.

The game covers a wide variety of skills related to number sense which align with the USA’s Common Core Standards in Math and the UK’s National Curriculum as well as curriculums in other countries such as Canada and Australia. Topics include:

Counting
This covers numbers all the way up to 100, covering concepts such as 1-2-1 correspondence, cardinality and ordinality, numeral recognition, counting on/from, counting backwards and skip counting 2s, 5s, and 10s.

Subitising
The ability to recognise quantities without counting.

Number bonds
Developing part-whole ideas around the composition of each number up to 20, and how to use them to split up and recombine numbers in useful ways.

Addition and subtraction
This builds on the children’s work with concepts such as number bonds and subitising, using their understanding of relationships between numbers to develop addition and subtraction strategies.

Manipulatives
The game uses teaching objects known as manipulatives. These represent number problems in lots of different ways. This includes fingers, five frames, ten frames, number lines, number tracks and dice patterns.

Place Value

Understanding that in a written numeral a digit its value can change depending on its position, meaning children grasp that a numeral can represent a unit of ones, tens, or hundreds depending on its placement.

Composition/Decomposition

Practicing putting numbers together to understand how the parts can make a larger whole, such as understanding how a number like 15 can be broken into a 10 and a 5.

Multiplication

Working with equal groups, repeated addition and arrays to build the foundations of multiplication.

Learn about our mini games!

Designed with the latest research on early childhood mathematical development, our mini games use repetition, manipulatives and visualisations to target all the foundational skills necessary for encouraging good number sense, as well as being super fun and engaging!

Each game develops particular mathematical skills. Find out more about what skills each of our games target on our mini games page.

Find out more

What does each stage of Number Skills cover?

Starter

For children who are starting to develop number skills. Our experts suggest all children begin here. This stage introduces children to the core basics of number sense. It covers addition, subtraction, number patterns, number words, numerals, subitising (knowing how many without counting) and number bonds (combining pairs of numbers) up to 5.

Confident

For children who have mastered number skills up to 5 and are ready to move on to numbers up to 10.
This stage covers more advanced addition and subtraction, counting forwards and backwards, recognising number patterns and developing number bonds (combining pairs of numbers) up to 10.

Experienced

For children who have mastered number skills for the first 10 numbers and are working on numbers larger than 10. This stage covers addition and subtraction for numbers over 10, including concepts such as place value (the value of each digit in a number) and number bonds (combining pairs of numbers) to 20. It also covers the use of number tracks and other classroom tools, and the foundations of multiplication.

How can Number Skills help children?

• The game has already been played over 25 million times by over 2 million children!

• Both US Common Core Standards in Math and UK National Curriculum alignment means that kids can put classroom learnings into practice.

• The pace of play is tailored to each child, allowing for differentiation. It moves only when the child has mastered the concept they are practicing.

• Confident children can fast track to the level best suited to them, allowing for differentiation between children with varying levels of ability.

• Kids have fun practicing numbers! Each mini game makes mathematics practice enjoyable and engaging.

Play now

A child playing Teach Your Monster Number Skills in a classroom

Number Skills is 100% FREE for schools!

All our games are completely FREE to play on computers for everybody, via our website! Our Number Skills app is also free for schools, when signed up with a verified school email address.

The proceeds we receive from our award-winning apps go straight back into our games, helping us create more resources to help children learn.

How to get started

1. Choose your account type.

2. Confirm your email.

3. That’s it! You can now play all our fabulous games!

We recommend creating a ‘test’ player so you can try the games for yourself first. For more help, check out our online tutorials and player guides.

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Meet the team

Bernie Westacott
Educational Consultant

Bernie taught mathematics full-time for thirty-nine years at different schools. He’s one of the co-authors of the Oxford University Press Inspire Maths support books. His expertise and knowledge have been at the forefront of the game development. He works with the Early Childhood Mathematics Group (ECMG) to develop child progression indicators.

Learn more about Bernie on our Expert page.

Learn more

Bernie Westacott Maths Educational Consultant

Dawid Kubiak
Game Designer and Developer

Dawid has been with Number Skills since the very start. From working with the illustrator, animators and product team, he has designed and developed the game every step of the way. He loves seeing the numsters in the Slides mini game!

Matt Sayers
Game Designer and Developer

With over two decades of digital media experience, Matt specialises in the children's and educational sector and has brought this to the game. He previously worked on the BAFTA winning Zingzillas, Sesame Street, Danger Mouse, CBeebies and many more games.

Matt Oxborrow
Artist

Matt is an illustrator, character designer and art director. He created the monsters and living theme park rides in our games! He really loves the monster customiser and playing around with all the crazy combinations.

Maya Sondhi
Voice Actor

Birmingham-born Maya is the voice of our fabulous Queenie Bee as well as an actress and a writer. After training at LAMDA, she has appeared in Line of Duty, Citizen Kane and many others. She is also the creator and writer of ITV’s DI Ray.

Maya Sondhi Voice Actor for Number Skills

Leo Allen
Product Manager

Leo has been responsible for launching Teach Your Monster Number Skills as well as the development of Teach Your Monster: Adventurous Eating. He is incredibly excited to lead the Teach Your Monster Number Skills team. From the science and research behind the game to the creation of the Number Park, Leo has been instrumental in guiding the Number Skills team.

Junaid Mubeen
Mathematician and Number Skills Fan

Junaid is a mathematician turned educator. He has spent over a decade working on innovative learning technologies, reaching students of all ages and abilities from around the world. Junaid has a DPhil in Mathematics from Oxford and a Masters in Education from Harvard, where he studied as a Kennedy Scholar. He is also a Countdown series winner! He’s a big Number Skills fan and his daughter, in particular, has developed a real fondness for numbers because of the game.