Free maths app for home education: Help test BrightWren

Help shape a new maths app for 7 to 11-year-olds

It’s called BrightWren. It covers Years 3 to 6 and is now in free beta.

I'm Matthew, a dad and product designer with 15 years’ experience, and for the past few months I've been building a maths app with my son Albie as chief tester. It's called BrightWren, it covers Years 3 to 6, and it's now in a free beta. I'd love home educating families to try it and tell me honestly what works and what doesn't.

What it is

BrightWren is short bursts of maths practice dressed up as a space game. Children fly between planets, rescue aliens and earn trophies, and every planet is a real maths topic. There's a quick five-question daily challenge for busy days, and a ten-question sprint for when they're in the zone.

Home: a five-question Daily 5, quizzes by topic, and Planet Pickup, the space game.

Planet Pickup: each planet is a topic. This is Year 3 in the autumn term.

Questions get harder or easier depending on how your child is doing, and when they get one wrong, they're shown how to work it out.

BrightWren maths question interface on a tablet One question at a time, with big buttons that are easy to tap on a tablet.

On the grown-up side you can see every topic for your child's year and how each one is going, rather than a single score.

BrightWren parent dashboard showing maths topics and progress The parent view: every topic this term, and how each one is going.

The structure question

Here's where I really need home educators. BrightWren follows a school-style sequence for English primary maths, organised by year group and term. Some families will find that useful as a ready-made route through KS2. Others do maths much more flexibly, following a child's interests or a different scheme entirely.

Nothing in the app is locked, so your child can jump to any topic at any time. But I don't yet know how that feels to a family who doesn't think in terms and year groups. Does the structure help, get in the way, or not matter at all? That's exactly the feedback I'm after, from both kinds of family.

What I'm asking

Sign up. It takes about ten seconds with just an email address.
Let your child use it for a couple of weeks, however suits you.
Tell me what you think. A sentence is plenty, and the blunt stuff helps most.

The practical bits

Free. Beta families keep it free for as long as we run it.
Nothing to install. It works in the browser on a phone, tablet, or computer.
No ads from other companies and no social features.
Your child has no account of their own; they practise inside yours under a nickname.
Made in the UK.