Your child can use Courselo in short sittings on their own, with you close by rather than over their shoulder. This guide explains what your child sees in the Key Stage 2 course, what the Papers tab does, what the grown-ups area is for, and a simple way to fit it all into an ordinary week.
What your child sees
The child’s side of the course has these parts. Budlet reads the lessons aloud, and read-aloud can be turned on or off in the grown-ups area.
Lessons
Each topic has a short animated lesson that Budlet, the course’s friendly seed mascot, reads aloud. Along the way there are “your turn” questions, so your child is doing, not just watching. Lessons are always free and can be watched again as often as your child likes. Watching a lesson twice is a perfectly good way to learn; there is no need to push on to the questions before your child feels ready.
Games
A game is a round of questions on one topic, or “Mix it up”, which draws questions from across topics. When your child misses a question, the answer is met with “Not yet” and a “Show me why” button that explains the idea, and then a similar question comes along so they can try the idea again straight away. Questions missed on an earlier day come back later, so the course quietly revisits anything that was shaky without your child having to remember to go back.
Stars
Each topic can earn 1 to 3 stars. Stars are earned by answering and are never taken away, so your child only ever sees them go up. In the grown-ups area the same stars read as Working towards, Expected and Greater depth, which gives you a plain-English picture of each topic.
Training
When a child misses several questions on a topic, Budlet steps in and teaches it another way. Your child then gets some easy questions, followed by two trickier ones. If the topic is still hard after that, it rests until tomorrow. This is deliberate: a fresh start the next day usually works better than another go when a child is tired, so if a topic is resting until tomorrow, that is the course working as intended.
Practise again
The home screen shows topics that would benefit from another go. If your child asks what to do next and nothing springs to mind, “Practise again” is a good place to start.
The Papers tab
The Key Stage 2 course has practice papers in the Papers tab. A few things are worth knowing before the first one.
- The timer is gentle. The paper has a timer, but it is not designed to loom. If your child finds any timer unsettling, or is working through their first paper, a grown-up can switch it to relaxed time. There is no need to think about the timer until your child is comfortable with the questions themselves.
- Scores are approximate. The papers are objective-only, which means every question has a set answer. That means the score is a guide to where your child is, not a prediction of anything. Treat it as a conversation starter (“Which bit felt hardest?”) rather than a verdict.
- One paper is plenty. One paper, followed by a look together at anything that was tricky, does more than two in a row.
The grown-ups area
Behind the grown-ups gate (hold the button, then type the answer to the multiplication shown in small print) is the area meant for you. It has:
- Progress per topic, with the stars shown as Working towards, Expected and Greater depth.
- “Needs a hand”, the topics your child has found hard, each with a tip you can use at home. This is the most useful screen for a busy parent: a two-minute look once a week tells you what, if anything, is worth a chat.
- Papers.
- These guides.
- Device settings: read-aloud on or off, the voice and its speed, sounds, calmer animations and captions. If your child finds the animations busy, “calmer animations” is worth trying; if they like to read along, turn on captions.
Read-aloud uses your device’s own voice. If the device has no English voice installed, the course hides the listening and spelling questions, and for the papers a grown-up can read the words aloud from a hold-to-reveal panel instead.
A routine that works
Short and regular beats long and occasional. A pattern many families settle into:
- Most days, ten to fifteen minutes. One lesson or one game, at a time that is already quiet, such as after a snack when your child gets home or before a bedtime story. Stop while it is still going well.
- Let your child choose between a new lesson, a game on a favourite topic, “Mix it up” or something from “Practise again”. Choice keeps it feeling like theirs.
- Once a week, two minutes for you in the grown-ups area. Look at “Needs a hand” and pick at most one topic to talk about. Then leave it.
- Papers only now and then, in relaxed time to begin with, and never as a response to a bad day.
If your child is in Year 6, remember that the tests in May are one snapshot of a year’s work; what helps most is the same calm, regular practice that helps in any year. If your child is younger, there is no reason to think about the Year 6 tests at all yet. The course simply has more to offer as they grow.
Privacy, accounts and the free plan
- The course never needs your child’s name. An optional nickname stays on the device.
- There are no ads, no chat, no videos and no AI, and the settings stay on the device.
- One account has one learner per course, so each child’s progress is their own.
- The free plan includes all the lessons and a daily number of game questions. Your child never sees prices or upgrade messages; anything to do with plans happens on your side, not theirs.
Last checked: October 2026.