Everything you need to use Wake NumAp — how to start, what the nine 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”.
Ask a three-year-old to count five buttons and you may hear “one, two, three, four, five” said perfectly — and then, when you ask how many, hear the whole chant again. The words have been learned. What they are for has not.
That gap is the subject of this app. Before a child can add, four separate
things have to become true, and they become true in this order: that counting
words come in a fixed sequence; that each word is matched to exactly one thing;
that the last word said is the answer to “how many”; and that the written
numeral 5 and the word five both mean that same amount.
Wake NumAp works on those four things, and only then on adding and taking away. It is the ground floor. Wake Easy.Sums.Ap 2–6, its sister app, is the storey above: once a child knows their numbers, Easy.Sums.Ap makes the sums automatic.
They are separate on purpose. NumAp asks what number is this? and
Easy.Sums.Ap asks what is the answer? A child who is still counting on
fingers to find six things is not ready to be timed on 4 + 2.
Start here, move across when counting is comfortable, and use both if you
like — they keep their own results and neither disturbs the other.
This is practice, not teaching, and not a test. It measures what a child does inside this app on a small screen, which is not the same as what they know. A child who is tired, rushing or new to a phone will score below their ability. Read every number here as a conversation starter with a teacher, never as a verdict.
Wake NumAp 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. Every pupil can reach every game immediately, in any order. A child who already knows their numerals can go straight to number words, and a parent who only wants counting practice can stay on game 1 for a month.
The tiles are numbered 1 to 8 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.
The one thing age does decide is how high the numerals and number words go to begin with. Counting, adding and taking away always stay small whatever the age.
| Age | Games available | Numbers go up to |
|---|---|---|
| 2–4 | All nine | 20 |
| 5 | All nine | 50 |
| 6 and over | All nine | 100 |
A grown-up can change the range at any time in Settings.
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 that is also the order in which they open. Each one rests on the one before it.
| # | Game | What the child does | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🍎 Count and pick the number | Counts a group of things, then taps the numeral that says how many. | 1–20 |
| 2 | 👆 Count with me | The same counting, but the app points at each thing in turn and shows its number, for a child whose finger is not yet steady. There is a Count again button, and it can be replayed as often as the child likes. | 1–10 |
| 3 | 🔢 Find that many | Reads a numeral, then taps the group with that many things in it. | 1–10 |
| 4 | ⚖️ More, fewer or same | Looks at two groups and taps the side with more — or “both the same”. | 1–8 |
| 5 | 🪜 Which number is missing? | Fills the gap in a run of numbers: before, after or between. | 1–100 |
| 6 | ➕ Counting on | Counts two or three groups being added and taps the total on the 0–9 keys. | sums to 9 |
| 7 | ➖ Taking away | Sees some things crossed out and taps how many are left. | from 9 |
| 8 | 📖 Number to word | Sees 47, hears it said aloud, and picks the words forty-seven. There is a Say it again button. | 1–100 |
| 9 | ✏️ Word to number | Reads forty-seven, hears it said aloud, and picks the numeral 47. There is a Say it again button. Needs a phone with a voice installed — most have one; if not, the game works silently as before. | 1–100 |
Reading forty-seven is reading, not arithmetic. A child counts fluently long before they can decode a hyphenated word, so those two games sit at the end of the sequence — even though they are among the most useful once they arrive. A six-year-old starts with them already open.
Perfectly fine, and expected. The numbering is advice for a child meeting numbers for the first time; it is not a syllabus anyone has to follow. If a five-year-old is confident counting but cannot read thirty, go straight to games 7 and 8 and stay there.
The one thing worth knowing is that games 5 and 6 — counting on and taking away — assume a child can already count a group reliably. If those two are going badly, game 1 is usually the reason, and a week on it will fix more than a week of practising the sums themselves.
By being earned — this one genuinely is. The app watches the numbers at the top of the current range, because getting one to ten right says nothing about being ready for fifty. Once the teens are secure the range goes to 50, and once the forties are secure it goes to 100. You will see a message saying so. Switch it off in Settings to keep the range exactly where you put it.
The big button at the top of the home screen plays a round drawn from all nine games 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 of the nine games. 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. Seven of the nine games answer by tapping a tile. Counting on and Taking away use the pop-up number keys at the bottom, the same 0–9 panel as Wake Easy.Sums.Ap.
Every answer is marked at once. A right answer is praised; a wrong one is answered with the correct number in words, and then shown in the counting frame or on the number line. 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 of the nine games, and the hundred square — every number from 1 to 100, green where the pupil is secure, pink where it still needs practice, plain where it has not come up yet. The hundred square 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 far the numbers go | 20, 50 or 100. Counting, adding and taking away are unaffected — those always stay small. |
| 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 numbers more often | Weaves past mistakes back into ordinary rounds. |
| Widen the number range automatically | Off keeps the range exactly where you set it above. |
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 NumAp 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 NumAp 2–6 · user manual · for app version 1.1. Sister app to Wake Easy.Sums.Ap 2–6.
▲ Back to the contents