Welcome to our blogIt has come to our attention that the Easter Bible story on Topmarks contained inappropriate material. We deeply regret this and apologise for any offence caused. We have withdrawn the offending content, and are conducting a site-wide review of all the materials on our site.
We would like to introduce Balloon Phonics, our latest free literacy game. It provides an excellent introduction to decoding words for those children at the start of their journey in learning to read.
Today we've released our latest maths game, Robot More or Less. It's an addition and subtraction game that provides steady progression for students who are developing their mental maths skills.
We've made our popular Paint the Squares resource even better adding more paint and hide number options, more grids including negative numbers and decimals, and also puzzles.
The National School's Partnership and Lifebouy have teamed up to launch a new hygiene education initiative called The Soaper Heroes.
If you are a teacher looking to update or supplement the range of your reading schemes, then take a look at Maverick Publishing's Early Readers.
Bead Numbers is our latest online game which is designed to challenge children's understanding of place value.
We've just launched Carroll Diagrams - Odd and Even which is an interactive game designed for 6 to 9 year olds.
We are delighted to announce the launch of our brand new maths game called 2D Shapes Sorting Using Carroll Diagrams. It has been designed to help children's understanding of classifying data according to two variable criteria.
We've just launched Subtraction to 10, another free maths game for children aged 5 or 6 years of age. Each calculation features a subtraction within 10, along with a pictorial representation of the start number.
We've just launched a second new addition game this week. It's called Robot Addition and it has three levels: Addition to 10, Addition to 15 and Addition to 20.
We are delighted to launch a brand new Addition to 10 game. It is aimed at young children who are being introduced to the concept of addition.
A favourite website of ours is Storyline Online which streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading beautifully illustrated children’s books.
Oxford Owl are expanding their range of free ebooks for the duration of the UK school closures so children between the ages of 3 and 11 can be supported at home with their reading.
We've come across some super free home learning resources for primary-aged children...
We're excited to announce that our highly popular Hit the Button mental maths app is now also available for Windows, and for Mac!
It’s always exciting to see more new book releases from the Maverick Publishing house, and to know that there are more titles to inspire children into reading is great news!
This exciting new campaign from Aldi, in association with Team GB and the British Olympic Association, is part of the Get Set to Eat Fresh initiative that inspires children towards healthy food choices.
Taking place each year, the Into Film Festival is designed for 5-19 year olds, aiming to help teachers and other educators inspire young people to watch, understand and make film in new and creative ways.
Who doesn’t love the fabulous stories of Roald Dahl? Young and old alike adore these rich stories to fire the imagination, so join in the celebrations for Roald Dahl Day, 2019.
Change4Life and Disney inspire a new campaign called 10 Minute Shake Up to boost physical activity levels during the school day.
Downloads of the Topmarks fonts have hit 10,000! If you've not yet tried it, why not join the thousands of people already enjoying it?
The National Schools Partnership network has let us know about a free financial education programme from NatWest.
With the help of a great guided reading program like Maverick Early Readers, children can make fantastic in-roads to becoming passionate readers
Are your children going to be tested under the new Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) assessment? Make sure you take advantage of Topmarks' Hit the Button game to help get them ready!
Make the most of a new set of open-access resources developed to encourage children to engage with the world around them, learning about different faiths.
This week there is a great promotion on for the learning app, Teach Your Monster to Read.
Following a successful launch year, The Big Battery Hunt is back for 2019!
Helping children learn to read is just the start on their journey to developing a life-long passion for reading!
Have you seen the challenge programme, Mission X: Train Like and Astronaut 2019? Focusing on fitness and nutrition, it’s a great plan full of STEM activities to encourage pupils with training missions to improve strength, balance, coordination and more.
We've listened to your feedback and updated our popular Hit the Button App to make it even better.
Topmarks has been exploring a new set of teaching resources, Sugar Smart World, from Change4Life, set to inspire teachers, parents and children to eat less sugar.
Topmarks is excited to announce our brand new collection of maths worksheets, especially created with Christmas themes. Great to use in the run-up to the holiday season!
Are you joining in with the Big Schools' Birdwatch project, early in 2019?
As Christmas draws closer, enjoy this new idea for children's learning that is full of festive fun! Christmas Patterns is ideal for 3 to 8 year olds.
Take a look at this recently launched maths learning app, which is called Vegetable Maths Masters, for school children!
Topmarks is excited to reveal a new update to our popular primary-age 'more or less' maths game, Chopper Squad. Now, it has new levels for counting on grids up to 20.
Look out for this fun new resource – the Happy Eggventures - designed for Key Stage 2 pupils, from the National Schools Partnership and the happy egg company.
Special Offer! There's a great promotion on for the learning app, Teach Your Monster to Read.
Encourage the young inventors of tomorrow in your classroom. With this resource and competition from National Schools Partnership, called Young Imagineers, pupils' imaginations will really be firing!
Reinforcing messages about where food comes from is oh-so-important and Topmarks loves this new initiative from Co-op and the National Schools Partnership.
This year's National Poetry Day will be here before we know it, coming up on 4 October 2018 – another fabulous chance to celebrate performing, reading and writing poetry!
Has your school received a visit from the NSPCC, encouraging children to seek help if they feel at risk or in danger? The charity's 'Speak out. Stay safe.' programme is FREE!
Topmarks is excited to reveal a new update to our popular primary-age money game, 'Toy Shop Money Game'. Now, it's fully playable in GBP, AUD, USD and EUR currencies!
Be prepared for the new term, with ready-made curriculum-linked lesson ideas to help with learning the importance of critical thinking and decision making – look out for the EconoME initiative.
Topmarks is excited to announce a brand new resource, called Teaching Clock. It's great for primary age children, who are learning how to tell the time, in analogue and digital format.
Ready for more fun learning with Topmarks? All aboard for a great new children's mental maths game that's called Multiples and Factors!
Nature needs our help! Here's a real-life science project that everyone can help with – the big butterfly count is on now, running until 20 August 2018, so don't miss out
Topmarks is excited to announce all-new ideas to help young children with identifying and working with numbers. We've added more levels to our Helicopter Rescue game to suit!
Get your children money-savvy with all-new updates to our Coins Game, with sorting, ordering and counting activities now in other currencies, as well as Pounds Sterling!
Look out for this brand new learning game from us at Topmarks, it's called Shape Patterns! It's designed for children aged 3-8 years to recognise shapes and solve patterns.
It's time for another new learning game from Topmarks. Not only did we release Mental Maths Train a few days ago, but by popular demand, now here's our Rocket Rounding game too. 3…2…1…Lift off!
Topmarks is excited to add a new game to our growing collection of learning resources – this one is called Mental Maths Train
The FIFA World Cup is on everyone's lips right now, so the message of getting active and staying healthy is fun to get across. But how can teachers keep that up? Take a look at the BBC's Super Movers campaign.
It's vital we do more to save planet Earth, and the issue of single-use plastic is a hot topic. Topmarks is loving the education programme at Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots site, helping to raise environmental awareness.
Get toes tapping and fire children's creativity, with a new programme called My School Rocks! Inspired by the West End hit, School of Rock the Musical, it's sure to fuel everyone's imaginations.
With exam season looming ever closer, Topmarks is here to help! It can be an anxious time, but follow these stress-free tips for revising, and you might find yourself at the top of the class.
Calling all maths coordinators, and teachers looking to boost maths confidence and motivation in their classrooms - try the Primary Maths Challenge in 2018!
As summer's marching ever closer, it's vital not to miss out on sun protection. Now's the time to make sure your 3-11 year-olds are ready, with Wrap, Splat, Hat!
Another new free game for you to enjoy! We hope you love our latest, tablet-friendly maths game called Measuring in Centimetres. It's designed for children aged 5 to 9, as an introduction to working with a ruler.
Fantastic for Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) learners, Topmarks is excited to announce a new learning game. Helping young children recognise basic shapes, the Shape Monsters are here!
It may not quite be heat wave season yet, but here at Topmarks, we are looking forward to summer sun! And along with that, it means staying skin-safe, of course.
Try this fun new idea for learning music, with a technology slant! Song Maker is a great new addition to the Chrome Music Lab suite.
Outdoor learning… Appreciating the fresh air and healthier lifestyles… Improving physical and mental well-being… A garden is a great way to teach young people about their environment, with many direct benefits!
Are your class studying Henry VIII and the Tudors? It's a popular history topic and we want to share a great resource from the Mary Rose Museum that's sure to inspire!
Are you looking for inspiration for a Mother's Day card for your class?
Look out for this celebration of all things STEM-related in the next couple of weeks, as schools and communities will be joining in with events and activities around science, technology, engineering and maths!
Have you seen the brand new learning game by Topmarks for early years' children? Let's Compare is out now!
The Big Battery Hunt is a new initiative hoping to make a positive difference to our planet and the way that young people think about recycling batteries.
Handy classroom ideas – here's a new update to our regular 'Be Prepared!' series to inspire you while lesson planning. We're here to help when time is scarce, so this idea's about upcoming numeracy lessons for Year 1 on place value...
Did you know we're constantly checking and updating the Topmarks' database of learning resources? Fully searchable, you can find a wealth of material across every curriculum area. Like this new STEM idea...
Here to help! We know the pressures of lesson planning, so we're starting a feature here on the Topmarks blog to help make your planning easier. Look out for our regular updates, "Be Prepared!"
Have you heard of Shakespeare Week? Mark the date in your diary for 12-18 March 2018, for this national celebration of all things Shakespeare, for primary-age children.
Make a start on Chinese New Year classroom crafts. It's the Year of the Dog in 2018, beginning on 16 February, and children will love crafting this art picture to celebrate!
Our brand new counting game is all set to help children with place value. Understanding the concept of hundreds, tens and ones can be difficult, but this FREE game, called Place Value Basketball, is designed to make learning easy.
With the start of a new year, it's a great time to set new targets for personal development.
Due to popular demand we have created a new free mental maths teaching resource called Daily 10. It spans all primary age groups, with levels corresponding to the curriculum requirements in England of year groups from 1 to 6.
Facebook has launched Messenger Kids which is a video calling and messenger app designed for children to connect with friends and family
White Rose Maths have released new free primary maths assessments, for Years 1 to 6, which are aligned to their excellent schemes of learning.
Schools in England can sign up before 22 December to receive FREE school library packs of books to boost their school library or classroom stock. The offer is being administered by the Booktrust
The Young Journalist Academy, celebrating its 10th year, has announced a new trial scheme helping to raise children's awareness and engagement with news and current affairs.
Last week we launched another new game, Chopper Squad which is designed to help children learning the concept of one more or less and ten more or less.
This week we've added two new tablet friendly maths games: Coconut Odd or Even and Coconut Multiples. They are similar games but they cover different mathematical concepts.
The annual nationwide Into Film Festival is now open for free bookings. The Festival takes place during the weeks from 8-24 November 2017 and it is the world's largest free film and education event for young people.
We are delighted to announce the launch of our brand new maths game, Helicopter Rescue, which is based on number charts and is designed to help children get to grips with two-digit numbers.
Have you seen our new Coconut Ordering maths game yet? It's been designed to help children compare and order different numbers from the early basics to decimal numbers.
We hope you love our new, tablet friendly maths game called Blast Off. It's for 5 to 8 year olds and it's designed to help children identify and work with two digit numbers beginning with the numbers 10 to 20.
We have added a United States variant to our popular Place Value Charts resource due to differing conventions in how numbers are presented in word form between the UK and the US.
In response to your requests we've launched a brand new Coins Game. It is designed for 4-10 year olds and as with all our own games it's tablet friendly.
We're delighted to release our latest free number charts resource. It's called Paint the Squares and it works really well both as a teacher demonstration tool or a resource for children to explore number patterns.
Tomorrow, 28 March 2017, the new £1.00 coin comes into circulation in the UK. The good news is we've updated our Toy Shop Money game with the new coin.
The White Rose Maths site could save you hours in planning your maths lessons. Designed to support the National Curriculum requirements in England, experts have put together term by term maths planning from Reception to Year 9.
We've been exploring ypte, the Young Person's Trust For the Environment, a charity website set up for the purpose of promoting young people's understanding of the environment and of the need for sustainability.
FuseSchool is a superb free online learning platform managed and run by the Fuse Foundation. Available free of charge, FuseSchool is aimed at the secondary age group.
Sustainable Learning is a fantastic primary resource site with ideas about the natural world, to help teachers inspire children about sustainability through cross-curricular learning.
Nat West's MoneySense Education Programme for schools in the UK and the Republic of Ireland offers lots of support and practical help for pupils learning about money in a real and relevant way.
We're delighted to have just launched our new primary money game called Toy Shop Money. It's suitable for 4 - 11 year olds and like all our maths games, it's tablet friendly.
Reach Out Reporter is a free online primary science news service, created by Tigtag and Imperial College, London, which helps teachers integrate topical science into everyday teaching and learning.
We've been looking at the award-winning KLOO game called 'Race to Paris' which is designed for both beginners and pre-intermediate learners of French and we are very impressed.
Google has just opened up their Google Expeditions Pioneer Programme to more schools across the UK. Imagine being able to take your students on immersive journeys to places you never thought possible.
Exactly 350 years ago from September 2nd and September 5th 1666 the Great Fire of London was raging. To mark this milestone a new fantastic website has been created called The Great Fire of London.
We've been busy making more maths games this summer and our latest, Number Fact Families, is aimed at 6 to 11 year olds.
If you're in the UK how about joining in the the Big Butterfly Count which runs from 15 July to Sunday 7 August, 2016?
Q-Files is a superb, illustrated online encyclopedia for children. It is an ideal reference tool in primary schools as it is written in child friendly language and covers a wide range of subjects
We've just launched a new tablet friendly mental maths game called Subtraction Grids which is ideal for 6 to 11 year olds.
We have just added Science and Plants for Schools to our search engine. It is a brilliant site which supports the teaching of plant science for age groups from 4 to 18 years.
Classical 100 is a free music resource for use in primary schools that is already being used by 2500 schools and is now available throughout the UK.
We are delighted to announce that due to popular demand our best selling Hit the Button Maths app is now available on Kindle Fire tablets, from the Amazon Appstore.
Have you noticed? A few days ago we updated our free Hit the Button online game to include times tables up to 12 in line with new curriculum requirements in England.
Have you tried the Primary Maths Challenge in your school yet?
If you're a primary school teacher in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, the Barefoot Computing Programme provides free, high-quality resources to boost your confidence with the computer science elements of the computing curriculum.
The BETT show 2016 produced a very worthy award winner in the Reach Out Continuing Professional Development site which we first featured in our blog post last June.
It will be Chinese New Year in 17 days on 8 February 2016! Chinese New Year always proves to be a really popular topic in primary schools and this year we have added two new craft activities to our existing resources.
We hope you enjoy our newly launched Symmetry Sorting maths game which we have created to complement our new Symmetry Matching game. Both games involve recognising reflective symmetry.
We are delighted to announce the launch of our new free Symmetry Matching game for 4-8 year olds.
Earlier this month we reviewed the fantastic Teaching Packs website. The Early Humans History Pack is a brand new addition to the Teaching Packs range and it's brilliant!
We are absolutely blown away and thrilled that our new Hit the Button Maths app has reached #2 in the Education iPad charts in the UK!
With all the stresses of the new term any ideas to reduce teachers' workload are very welcome. Various sites have sprung up over the last few years with printable resources for primary schools which are ideal to dip into when you need display resources.
Here are two useful place value teaching tools that work together really well. They're ideal for demonstration on an interactive whiteboard too. The first is our own Place Value Charts resource...
We're always being asked whether we have an apps for iPads and Android tablets. Well, we have now! Our brand new Hit the Button Maths app builds upon our popular web game with some extra features...
We hope you're enjoying a good summer break and have recharged your batteries. Meanwhile we have been beavering away to bring you a brand new app which we are really excited to tell you about.
Have you heard of the free film screenings for schools and youth groups called the Into Film Festival?
We are thrilled to launch brand new, freely downloadable Topmarks fonts which are ideal for use by early years and primary school teachers.
Do you feel confident in delivering the Computing curriculum that was introduced in England in September 2014? If not you may be interested in a free online course designed especially for primary and Key Stage 3 secondary school teachers.
Do you teach primary science? If so you may be interested in Reach Out, a free Continuing Professional Development online resource designed especially to support teachers in the UK with the science curriculum.
One recent brilliant addition to our search engine is Code.org, a site which gives a fantastic introduction to computer coding. It has lots of free tutorials...
FutureLearn offers a diverse selection of free courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world.
Number Pieces Basic, designed for primary students, is freely available for the iPad with no in-app purchases so is ideal for school use.
Recently we learned of a brilliant class behaviour management idea which works really well in primary classrooms. It's known as Mystery Walker and is aimed at improving pupils' behaviour when moving round school.
Do you sometimes need inspiration for practical science ideas in the primary classroom? If so you may like to check out these cool websites which are bursting with exciting ideas and ideal to try with primary aged children.
If you use YouTube either at home or school then you will have noticed the distraction of ads that play before the content and comments below the video that can be inappropriate for a young audience. This is where SafeShare.TV comes into its own.
We've just added an exceptional maths site to our search engine called Area Builder. We love it because it has a teaching section which is ideal for...
It's one of those rare days today, 20th March 2015, where several celestial events occur. Not only is it the spring equinox, the first day of spring, the date when the hours of day and night are the same, but there is a solar eclipse and a supermoon too.
Did you know it's Shakespeare Week, a national annual celebration designed to introduce primary school children to Shakespeare's life, work and times in a fun way? The official Shakespeare Week site, coordinated by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, has free downloadable resources for educators.
The fantastic primary maths iOS app called Pattern Shapes is free with no in-app purchases, so downloading it is a no-brainer. It's very versatile and can be used throughout the primary age range.
Easter will soon be upon us! We've lots of Easter themed primary age classroom resources which include an illustrated Easter story, Easter traditions such as the Easter Bunny, and Easter craftables and recipes.
We want to share a great idea for the primary classroom, one which is so simple we wish we had thought of it. It's the use of dice in small, see-through containers when playing maths games in the primary classroom.
Are you full of the joys of spring? Well maybe not if you are back at school tomorrow after half-term. However, spring is just round the corner and if you're planning a topic on the spring season then our comprehensive All about Spring topic may be just the thing you're looking for.
Happy Chinese New Year to all those celebrating today! It's now the Year of the Goat (Sheep or Ram), which is the eighth animal in the Chinese Zodiac cycle.
A cracking teaching resource that we've added to our search engine recently is Number Rack. It's available either on the web or as a free app on iPad and iPhone.
Following our recent popular post suggesting lapbooks for topic work we've created additional mini-book templates which you are welcome to download below for free.
Have you seen our tablet friendly Chinese Dragon Game which involves ordering and sequencing numbers and that we designed especially with Chinese New Year in mind?
We love The Royal Institution's science site called ExperRimental and it's just one of the latest additions to our search engine. It has fabulous short films of science experiments for children. Just the thing to spark an interest in science in youngsters.
We are delighted to have added a link in our search engine to a fabulous children's online encyclopaedia called 'DKfindout!' from DK (formerly Dorling Kindersley). The good news is that it is free!
We've been busy making additions to our Chinese New Year pages for 2015.
Ask any teacher what the worst things about the job are, and our guess is that the mountain paperwork that you accumulate over time, will be on the list. We think help may be at hand...
We think Duolingo is a fabulous free languages site. So if you fancy learning a language, and there are a growing number to choose from, how about joining 50 million people around the world who have been doing just that with Duolingo?
Lately I've been seeing topic work displayed in lapbooks, which may be called layer books or flap books. They are basically folders containing topic work in different formats of 'mini-books' such as pockets, flap books, facts and pictures.
It's Chinese New Year on 19 February 2015 when it will be the Year of the Goat. The number of people looking at our Chinese New Year resources is starting to really ramp up.
We're very excited to welcome you to our new blog! We will of course be sharing fantastic teaching and learning resources with you including new content on Topmarks, the best recent additions to our search engine and our latest maths games.
