Become a Potion Master with Percentages!

Welcome to the Percentage Potions lab! This magical game is a fun and exciting way to practice one of the most practical maths skills: calculating percentages. To create the perfect potion, you must follow the ancient recipe very carefully!

Your challenge is to read the recipe, work out the correct percentage of each ingredient, and add it to the cauldron. With every correct answer, you’ll see the potion in the cauldron bubble and rise!

Why is This Game Great for Learning?

Learning percentages can be tricky, but putting it into a fun, real-world context makes it much easier to understand. This game helps children to:

• Make Maths Practical: It connects the abstract concept of percentages to the idea of measuring parts of a whole, just like in a real recipe.
• Build Mental Maths Skills: The game focuses on common percentages (10%, 25%, 50%, etc.), which helps children develop mental shortcuts (e.g., “25% is the same as dividing by 4”).
• Create a Magical Motivation: The fun theme of mixing potions in a spooky lab makes practicing a fun and rewarding experience.

For Teachers and Parents: Meeting Key Stage 2 Objectives

This “Percentage Potion” game is an excellent resource for supporting the National Curriculum for maths, particularly for children in upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5 and 6).

• Year 5: The curriculum requires pupils to “solve problems involving percentage” and to understand that percent relates to “number of parts per hundred”. This game provides direct practice in finding percentages of amounts.
• Year 6: The game reinforces the Year 6 objective to “solve problems involving the calculation of percentages [for example, of measures…]”. By repeatedly calculating the correct amount of potion to add, children become more confident and fluent in their methods, whether they are finding 10% and multiplying, or using their knowledge of equivalent fractions.

It’s an ideal activity for a fun homework task, a classroom starter, or for any child who would benefit from practicing percentages in a creative way.