Everything you need to use Wake Color.Num.Ap — how to start, what the eight games teach, how to read a report, and how to keep your child's results safe.
For app version 1.1
To keep a copy: use your browser's Print option and choose “Save as PDF”.
These look like two subjects. They are one, and the app is built on the join between them.
Put six identical counters on a table, four of them red and two blue. A
two-year-old looks at that and sees “the red ones”. A four-year-old counts
them: “four are red”. A six-year-old reads the same picture as
four out of six, and then writes 4/6. Nothing on the table
changed. What changed is how much of it the child can put into words.
That is why every game here uses a group of things identical in every way except colour. Because nothing else differs — same shape, same size, same spacing — colour is the only thing left to notice. A fraction stops being a rule to memorise and becomes a description of something the child can see.
Colour is not decoration here. It is the handle the child holds the fraction by.
Fractions are usually taught late, and usually go badly. Part of the reason is that when they finally arrive, they arrive as notation — a number over another number, with rules for handling it — years after any picture that made sense of them.
A child who has spent a year saying “three out of six are red” out loud has
already met the idea. When 3/6 appears in a classroom, it is
shorthand for something familiar rather than something new. That is the whole
purpose of the second half of this app: not to teach fraction arithmetic, but to
make sure the idea arrives before the notation does.
Every child already knows about fair shares, and feels strongly about them, long before they can say the word half. Game 6 uses that: share eight things between two people, and the answer is four each — which is another way of saying half of eight. The feeling comes first and the vocabulary is fitted to it, rather than the other way round.
Wake Color.Num.Ap runs in a web browser, but it is meant to live on the home screen like any other app. On Android, open it in Chrome, tap the three dots and choose Add to Home screen. On iPhone, open it in Safari, tap the share button and choose Add to Home Screen.
Once it is there it opens full screen, without browser buttons, and works with no internet at all.
Opening the file inside WhatsApp, Gmail or a file manager shows a preview, and previews do not run apps: the buttons will not respond. Save the file first and open it with Chrome or Safari — or, better, ask for the web link rather than the file.
Tap Add a pupil, then give a first name, an age, a picture and a grown-up's email address. The email is used for reports and for messages to support; nothing leaves the device unless you choose to send it.
Nothing is locked within what a pupil can see: any game on their home screen can be played at any time, in any order. What the age does decide is which tiles appear at all — the fraction games are held back from the very young. Turn on Show every game, whatever the age in Settings if you know your child is ready sooner.
The tiles are numbered in the order we suggest learning them, and a beginner's first tile carries a Start here tag until they have played something. That is guidance, not a gate.
Two things: which games appear, and how many colours are in play to begin with. Both can be changed by a grown-up at any time in Settings.
| Age | Games shown | Colours to begin with |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1 and 2 — matching and the odd one out | 4 |
| 3 | 1 to 3 — and finding a colour by name | 4 |
| 4 | 1 to 5 — naming, and counting by colour | 4 |
| 5 | 1 to 7 — sharing, and fractions in words | 8 |
| 6 and over | All eight — including the written fraction | 8 |
An older learner — an adult brushing up, or a child who simply enjoys it — gets every game.
Sit beside your child for the first one. Read each question aloud. Let them point at the things on the screen and count out loud — counting silently is harder, and at this age it is also less accurate. Five minutes is plenty.
▲ Back to the contentsThey are listed in teaching order, and each rests on the one before it. The first four are about colour and need no arithmetic at all. Game 5 is the bridge. The last three are fractions.
| # | Game | What the child does | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🎨 Same colour as this | Sees one colour, then taps the one that matches it. No words are needed at all, which is why it comes first — a child shows you they can see a difference long before they can name it. | 2 |
| 2 | 🔍 Which one is different? | Four or five things, all one colour except one. Taps the odd one. This is sorting, and sorting comes before naming. | 2 |
| 3 | 👂 Find the colour | Hears a colour named aloud — and sees it written — then taps it. There is a speaker button to hear it again as often as they like. | 3 |
| 4 | 📛 What colour is this? | Sees a colour and chooses its name from four words. Harder than game 3, because nothing on the screen helps. | 4 |
| 5 | 🔢 How many are red? | Counts only the things of one colour and ignores the rest. This is the bridge between the two halves of the app: a colour question and a number question at the same moment. | 4 |
| 6 | 🤝 Share them fairly | Shares a group between two, three or four, and says how many each. After the answer, the app shows the shares laid out in rows so "equal" is visible. | 5 |
| 7 | 🍰 How many out of how many | Reads a fraction off the group in words — "three out of eight are red". No notation yet. | 5 |
| 8 | 🧮 Write it as a fraction | The same picture, answered with the written form at last. By now the child has said the sentence aloud many times. | 6 |
A pupil is only shown the games their age suits — the "From" column above. A two-year-old sees three games, not eight. This is deliberate: handing a very young child "how many out of how many" teaches them only that this app is where they fail.
If you know your child is ready sooner, turn on Show every game, whatever the age in Settings. The app should never tell a parent they are wrong about their own child.
Every pupil starts with four colours — red, blue, yellow and green. They are far enough apart that nobody mixes them up by accident. Once all four are secure, four more appear on their own: orange, purple, pink and brown. You can also set this by hand in Settings, or switch the automatic widening off.
Perfectly fine, and expected. The numbering is advice for a child meeting colours for the first time; it is not a syllabus anyone has to follow. If a five-year-old names every colour confidently but has never met a fraction, go straight to games 5 and 6 and stay there for a month.
The one thing worth knowing is that games 7 and 8 assume game 5 is comfortable. If the fraction games are going badly, "how many are red?" is usually the reason, and a week on that will do more than a week of practising fractions themselves.
The big button at the top of the home screen plays a round drawn from all the games your pupil has open at once. It is the best daily habit: short, varied, and it stops any one skill going stale.
When the answer is 47, the other choices might be 74, 46 or 57 — the mistakes children genuinely make. An option nobody would ever pick teaches nothing and quietly makes the question easier than it looks. This is also what lets the report tell you which kind of mistake is being made.
Reports, Settings, Support and the class dashboard sit behind a multiplication
question — 8 × 6 and the like. It is not security; it is a speed
bump that a five-year-old will not get past by tapping. Once answered it stays
open for ten minutes.
Stars earned, rounds played, best score and the day streak sit at the top, then Mixed practice, then a tile for each game the pupil has open. Each tile carries its suggested-order number, and a small bar showing how that game is going, so progress is visible without opening anything.
The dots along the top show the questions: yellow is the one being answered, green is right, pink is wrong. Every game is answered by tapping a tile — a colour, a word, a number, or a written fraction. There are no keys to type.
Every answer is marked at once. A right answer is praised; a wrong one is answered with the correct one shown in the group itself, with the sentence underneath — "4 out of 6 are red, that is four sixths, and that is the same as two thirds". A child is never left with only a red mark.
Four pictures: scores over time, seconds per question, a skill board with a bar for each game, and the colour board — all eight colours, each drawn in itself, showing how often it is answered correctly. The colour board is the one to look at first.
What this pupil gets wrong most often, hardest first, with a button to practise exactly those. Use it twice a week, not every day.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| How many colours | Four (red, blue, yellow, green) or all eight. Four is where every child should start. |
| Questions per round | 5, 10, 15 or 20. Ten is right for most children. |
| Speaking voice | Which voice reads the questions aloud. Left to itself the app picks a clear one, and a different one for each pupil. If it is hard to make out on your phone, choose another from the list and press 🔊 Hear this voice. On an iPhone you can add more under Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content → Voices. |
| Sounds | Turns the tones off. Useful in a classroom. |
| Animations | Turns off movement, for children who find it distracting. |
| Practise tricky ones more often | Weaves past mistakes back into ordinary rounds. |
| Add the other four colours automatically | Off keeps the colour set exactly where you put it above. |
| Show every game, whatever the age | Shows the fraction games to a young child. Off by default. |
The report is written from the pupil's own recorded answers. It covers what has been played, how accurately, how quickly, which numbers have been met, and what to do next. You can print it, save it as a PDF, email it or send it on WhatsApp.
Most of the value is here. A score tells you how much is wrong; these tell you what kind of wrong, and each one needs a different response.
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Digits read in the wrong order | 47 taken for 74. A reading habit, not a number problem. Cover the second digit, read the first, then uncover. |
| The teens and the tens confused | Thirteen for thirty. English is at fault: fourteen says the four first and forty does too. Say the pairs aloud together. |
| Answers out by exactly one | A counting slip, not a gap in knowledge — something counted twice or skipped. Ask for slow counting, touching each thing once. |
The report also names it when answers arrive very fast and mostly wrong. That is tapping rather than thinking, and it is worth catching early.
Accuracy matters more than speed at this age, and the trend matters more than any single round. A dip usually means a tired child, not a lost skill. Four or five rounds must exist before a trend means anything at all.
The app never opens your email by itself — on some phones that takes the app away mid-report. Instead it shows the words with a Copy button, and you paste them wherever you like. There is a link to open your email app if you prefer, but copy first and nothing can be lost.
▲ Back to the contentsA licence belongs to the household or the classroom, not to one child. A family paying for three pupils is never asked to pay again for the second, and a child added later inherits the licence already on the device.
Schools receive a code by email after payment. Enter it on the plans screen. Codes are checked on the device itself, so no internet is needed.
Wake Easy.Sums.Ap codes begin WM- and Wake Color.Num.Ap codes begin
WN-. A code for one app will not open the other, and if you enter
the wrong one the app says so plainly rather than calling it invalid.
A warning appears five days before. When it does end, nothing is deleted — the pupil's whole history stays exactly where it is and returns the moment the plan is renewed.
▲ Back to the contentsAlmost always the browser's data was cleared, or the app was opened in a different browser. Results live in the browser that made them. Restore from a backup — see the next chapter.
The old copy is cached. Close every tab of the app, then reopen it. If you host
it yourself, remember to change wake-numap-v1 to
v2 in sw.js each time you upload a new
index.html.
Check the switch in Settings, then the phone's own volume and silent switch. Some phones also need one tap anywhere in the app before they will play anything.
The keys only appear for Counting on and Taking away, and the app scrolls the question above them. If it is still tight, use Hide keys, count, then Show the number keys again.
Some games have only so many questions in them — Find that many has ten and no more. Asking for twenty questions a round means some will repeat. That is practice, not a fault.
Use the Copy the words button and paste into your email by hand. It is the reliable route on every phone.
▲ Back to the contentsEvery result lives in this browser on this device, and nowhere else. Nothing is uploaded to us. That keeps a child's data private — and it means that clearing your browser, changing phone or reinstalling will lose a term's work unless you have saved a backup.
Settings → Save a backup writes a small file to the device. Email it to yourself and it is safe. Do this at the end of each term, and before changing phone. To bring it back: Settings → Restore from a backup.
If a pupil already exists on the device, the copy with more history wins. Restoring can never quietly lose work.
With a class licence, the teacher's dashboard can take a backup file sent from a family's own phone, so home practice appears alongside the rest of the class.
Settings → Erase this pupil removes that child and all their results from the device. It cannot be undone, so save a backup first if there is any doubt.
Wake Color.Num.Ap 2–8 · user manual · for app version 1.0. One of the four Wake Learning Apps.
▲ Back to the contents