Color by Number Generator

A grid, a key, and a picture that appears

Each cell holds a clue and the key at the bottom says which colour goes with which number. Colour every cell correctly and the picture emerges.

The clue is where the teaching happens. On the simplest setting it is just the colour number, which suits a child still learning to recognise numerals. Turn it into a sum and the child has to work out the answer before they know which pencil to reach for, which is number practice wearing a colouring sheet as a disguise.

Five kinds of clue

Plain number for the youngest, where the task is colour recognition and nothing else.

Addition and subtraction, then multiplication, where each cell shows a problem whose answer is the colour number. For addition and subtraction you set the largest value that may appear, so the arithmetic matches the group. Multiplication does not use that setting: it draws from each colour's own times-table facts instead.

Sight words, which involve no arithmetic at all. The key maps words to colours and the same picture becomes reading practice.

Eight pictures, and the same one twice

An apple, a heart, a flower, a star. A fish, a rocket, a butterfly, a cupcake. Or Random, which picks for you.

Press Generate new and the picture stays while a completely fresh set of clues is drawn over it. That is the feature worth knowing about: thirty children can have the same rocket with thirty different sets of sums, so nobody can copy and everybody ends up with the same thing on the wall.

Number bonds to ten, hidden in an apple

Apple picture, addition clues, largest addend set to nine. Every red cell now shows something like 4+3 or 6+1, and each of them totals the colour number for red.

By the time the apple is finished a child has worked through dozens of addition facts. None of it felt like a worksheet, which is the point, and the ones who are secure finish faster rather than being given something different.

The answer key prints the finished picture rather than a list, so marking is holding two pages side by side and looking for a cell of the wrong colour.

Getting the pitch right

• Match the number range to what the group is genuinely working on this week, rather than to the year group they happen to be in.
• One worksheet per child, one answer key for you.
• Plain-number mode for anyone still forming numerals. The sums can wait.
• Laminate a completed sheet and pin it up as a colour reference, which saves answering the same question about which red is which thirty times.
• Add to workbook, if you want several bound into one pack.