A New Chapter for Morning Challenge: More Resources, More Games and More for Free!

If you’ve visited Morning Challenge recently, you might have noticed that things are looking a little different! Over the past few months, I’ve been working behind the scenes on what has probably been the biggest update to Morning Challenge since I first created the site.

There’s a fresh new look, but much more importantly, there’s a huge amount of new and updated content to explore.

I’ve launched new interactive learning tools, completely overhauled the Educational Arcade, upgraded existing resources and reached a milestone that has taken a lot of work to get to: completing the full Morning Challenge calendars for all six age groups.

And while Morning Challenge continues to grow for subscribers, I’ve also been working hard on something that’s equally important to me: making sure there is a genuinely useful collection of free primary teaching resources and classroom tools available to everyone.

So, here’s what’s new!

A Bigger and Better Educational Arcade, Completely Free 🎮

The Educational Arcade has had its biggest overhaul yet, and everything in it is completely free to use. I wanted to create somewhere children would genuinely choose to visit, while still giving teachers the reassurance that their pupils are practising useful skills.

The result is a growing collection of free educational games for primary children, covering areas including Maths, phonics, times tables and more.

The games can be used on interactive whiteboards, classroom computers and tablets, whether you need a whole-class activity, independent practice, something for early finishers or just a worthwhile way to fill those mysterious five minutes that occasionally appear at the end of a lesson!

Throughout the overhaul, I’ve tried to stick to one simple rule:

Create something children want to play and teachers actually want them to play.

There’s plenty more planned for the Arcade too, and it will remain free for everyone.

Fast Fluency: Unlimited Maths Practice for Free ⚡

One of the biggest new additions is Fast Fluency, a completely free Maths tool that I created to solve a problem I remember very well from my own time in the classroom. Sometimes you don’t need another enormous worksheet. You just need si good Maths questions.

Fast Fluency lets you choose from six different levels and instantly generate a fresh set of age-appropriate Maths questions. Need another set? One click generates one. You can display them on the board or print them for pupils to complete, making Fast Fluency ideal as a Maths starter, morning activity, intervention task, early-finisher challenge or quick assessment.

There’s no subscription needed to use it. Choose a level. Generate the questions. Get started.

It’s exactly the sort of simple, time-saving tool I would have loved to have had when I was teaching.

And Meet Dotty Phonics 🐱

There’s also Dotty Phonics, featuring a certain cat who has finally been persuaded to contribute to the family business! Dotty Phonics provides quick, interactive phonics games for primary children, including activities involving real and nonsense words, identifying sounds and completing words.

With different levels, timers, scores and streaks, I’ve tried to give children that “one more go” feeling while keeping the focus firmly on practising important phonics skills.

Like Fast Fluency and the Educational Arcade, Dotty Phonics is completely free to use.

And Dotty finally has a job.

Free Resources That Are Actually Useful

Keeping a substantial part of Morning Challenge free for everyone is really important to me.

I know how stretched school budgets are, and I also know that not every teacher is in a position to pay for another subscription.

My goal with Morning Challenge has always been to help teachers save time and help children make progress. I want there to be something genuinely useful here whether you subscribe or not. That’s why the free side of Morning Challenge goes beyond the Educational Arcade, Fast Fluency and Dotty Phonics.

I’ve also brought together a collection of free Classroom Tools specifically to make those little everyday teaching jobs quicker and easier.

When I was teaching, I’d often find myself jumping between different websites for the simple tools I needed throughout the day: one site for a countdown timer, another for a random group generator, somewhere else to roll a dice or toss a coin. So, I decided to put them all in one place.

The Classroom Tools bring together countdown timers, mind-mapping, group generators, dice rolls, coin tosses and more, ready to open whenever you need them. They’re not another set of activities for children to work through.

They’re simply practical tools for teachers, designed to remove a few more clicks from the school day. No hunting through bookmarks. No trying to remember which website had the tool you used last Tuesday. Just open Morning Challenge and it’s there.

You don’t need to subscribe to use the Educational Arcade, Fast Fluency, Dotty Phonics or Classroom Tools. They’re there to be used. If they save you some time, help a child practise a skill or simply mean you have one fewer website to search for during a busy school day, they’re doing exactly what I created them to do.

Six Morning Challenge Calendars. Every Day of the Year. 📅

For subscribers, this is probably the milestone I’m most pleased to have reached.

Morning Challenges have been available for every day of the year for some time, but there has always been something bigger I wanted to achieve.

I’ve now completed the full Morning Challenge calendar for all six age groups. That means that every single day of the year now has Morning Challenge content specifically created for six different ages and stages of primary education.

And these aren’t simply six slightly easier or harder versions of the same activity. Each calendar features age-related content, questions and activities, so teachers can choose the appropriate level and find challenges created with those pupils in mind.

Across the year, children encounter an enormous range of subjects, skills and ideas. There are challenges involving Maths, science, history, geography, reading, vocabulary, writing, debate, general knowledge, problem solving and much more.

Some will get children calculating.

Some will get them writing.

Some will introduce them to something they’ve probably never heard of before.

And some will hopefully start the sort of classroom discussion that carries on long after the Morning Challenge has finished.

I never wanted Morning Challenge to become ten minutes of repetitive questions every morning. I wanted children to come in wondering what today’s challenge was going to be.

Now, there’s age-related content ready to go across the entire primary age range, every day of the year.

It has taken an enormous number of challenges to get there, so seeing all six calendars finally complete feels pretty special.

More for Subscribers, Including an Upgraded Mental Maths

Of course, the Morning Challenges are only one part of the subscriber collection.

Subscribers also have access to a growing library of ready-to-use resources including Maths Warm-Ups, Story Starters, Mental Maths and Talking Points, all designed to give teachers useful content they can put in front of their class without spending their evening preparing it.

Mental Maths has also had an upgrade, giving teachers an improved way to build regular Maths practice into the school day.

These resources complement the daily Morning Challenges and provide quick, flexible activities that can be used throughout the week, whether that’s getting everybody thinking at the start of a Maths lesson, inspiring some creative writing or starting a discussion that gets the whole class involved.

They all come back to the same idea: less time preparing, more time teaching.

Free or Subscriber, the Goal Is the Same

Morning Challenge has grown enormously since I first started creating it, but I don’t want the reason behind it to get lost amongst all the new games, tools and resources.

The goal is still very simple:

To help every teacher save time and help every child make progress.

For some teachers, that might mean using Fast Fluency every morning. For others, it might be letting pupils practise through the Educational Arcade, using Dotty Phonics for an intervention, or simply opening the Classroom Tools when they need a timer, group generator, mind map or quick roll of the dice. And for subscribers, it might mean knowing that tomorrow morning’s age-related Morning Challenge, Maths Warm-Up, Story Starter, Mental Maths or Talking Point is already there waiting for them.

Having spent years in the classroom myself, I know how quickly planning, marking, meetings, emails, displays, photocopying and everything else can eat into your time.

If Morning Challenge can give even a little of that time back, while giving children something engaging and worthwhile to do, then it’s achieving what I set out to do.

Come and See What’s New

Whether you’ve been using Morning Challenge for years, haven’t visited for a while or have only just discovered the site, now is a great time to have another look.

Explore the Educational Arcade, generate some questions with Fast Fluency, try Dotty Phonics or bookmark the Classroom Tools so your timer, group generator, mind-mapping tool, dice and other everyday essentials are all in one place. No subscription required.

And if you want even more ready-to-use content, you can explore the subscriber resources, including the newly completed Morning Challenge calendars for all six age groups, Maths Warm-Ups, Story Starters, Mental Maths and Talking Points.

There’s plenty more I still want to create, and I’m fairly sure I’ll never actually consider Morning Challenge “finished”. But that’s rather the point. I want it to keep growing, keep improving and, most importantly, keep making teachers’ lives that little bit easier.

Save time. Support progress. Make every day a little more engaging.