Preparing for Back To School With Education Quizzes

I'm a firm believer in letting kids completely relax and switch off in the summer holidays.  They work so hard at school and more and more are becoming stressed with the pressure put on them particularly if they've been doing SATS or have exams.

However, there comes a point in the holidays where my daughter becomes bored. She needs to use her brain!  We always sign up to the summer library reading challenge so I know her reading skills are ticking over, but we've been looking for something else.

Education Quizzes is perfect because it's tailored to your child's key stage level.  These bite-sized quizzes are great for preparing the brain for going back to school, and getting back into 'learning mode' before the end of the holidays.

Particularly good if your child lacks confidence, we've used many of the themed quizzes to go back over learning just completed in Year 3 and she's been really happy that she's able to get most of the questions correct.  It reinforces her understanding and gives her a boost as well.

She's also taken a look at some of the Maths and English quizzes for Year 4 which she'll be moving into in September.  She's been quite anxious this holiday about the new school year, fearful that the subjects will suddenly become hugely difficult, but she's found reassurance in being able to correctly answer a lot of the questions already before she's even started Year 4.

Like a lot of kids, Ruby loves to use IT to learn, but as a parent I do worry about internet safety.  This site is completely safe and age appropriate and there's no messaging facility for the child so you know that nobody will be trying to contact your child.

The site works on a subscription basis at £9.95 per month, with no obligation, you can cancel at any time.  Once you have the log in you can access the quizzes from any device making it perfect for learning on the go - we can take the iPad with us when travelling and she can access it from wherever.

The questions are multiple choice, and we did sometimes find on a tablet that the screen was too sensitive, meaning she sometimes hit the wrong answer accidentally, but that may be more about our tablet than the site itself.

Scores out of ten are recorded alongside each quiz, with the date it was achieved, meaning you can go back and practice areas where extra help is needed, and see your improvement.  All the quizzes are written by teachers so you can rest assured they're appropriate and accurate.  We did find some of the more subjective topics such as History and RE a little tricker because obviously not every class in the country will cover exactly the same facts, despite the national curriculum - for example, when learning about the Saxons, Ruby's class focused more on the social history than historical dates or facts. But we've found the Maths and English sections in particular, brilliant.

Each subject is broken down into topics for the relevant year group i.e in Maths for KS2 you have addition and subtraction, ordering, fractions, decimal numbers, handling data, measurement, time, multiplication and division, negative numbers, rounding etc etc.  There really is a wealth of topics covered.  You can choose PE, IT, Geography, Maths, Music, English, Design and Technology, Art and Design, PSHE, Science and Times Tables.

The levels range from Key Stage 1 right up to GSCE so there's something for everyone whether just starting out in school, practicing for their SATS, their 11 Plus or their GSCEs - there are 300 quizzes aimed at those taking their 11 Plus alone! With the curriculum and learning methods changing constantly, one of the huge benefits is that parents can be confident it's updated to show the very latest topics, unlike study aid books which quickly go out of date.

Because they recognise that not everyone can afford £9.95, they are working with schools to give full access to students.  Schools can pay on behalf of the students and benefit from massively reduced costs - depending on the school size it could be as little at £2 per year for each child.  If you work in education and would like to find out more about this scheme, you can contact them here. 

Take a look at Education Quizzes, there are plenty of free ones available to preview to before you sign up, so you can try it out for yourself.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.