For grown-ups and teachers

This isn't a guide you read. It's one you do. Here's what's worth knowing first — whether you're sitting next to one kid at home or running this with a class.

One chapter, one page, start to finish

A chapter is a single web page. The story and the labs sit together. You read, you turn a dial right there, you keep reading. Nothing to go hunting for.

Every lab has a short name like H1 or P2. Those names never change between editions. Printed page numbers shift; lab names don't.

It's fine to give away the answer

This is the worry we hear most. It's fine.

Every lab has a Show me button. We put it there on purpose. A kid stuck on a question for too long isn't learning — they're leaving. Seeing the answer and going "oh, that's why" is learning too.

You don't need to know the answers. It's better if you don't. Press the buttons together, be surprised together, and your kid gets to be the one who worked it out.

What do you need?

An internet connection, that's all. Every lab runs on the device itself. Whatever your kid draws, photographs, or records never leaves the device. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.

Only a few labs use a camera or microphone.

Without a camera or microphone you can still finish every single one. Each of those labs ships with photos, video and recordings to use instead. Doing it yourself is just more fun.

How long does it take?

About 30 to 40 minutes per chapter — ten minutes reading, twenty or thirty doing.

Don't rush through several chapters at once. Poking at one lab for a long time is worth much more.

Where the stories come from

This guide tells a lot of old stories. What we checked says where each one came from — including the six we got wrong and fixed once we read the originals.

Using it in class

A chapter is about one lesson's worth. If a chapter has two or three labs and you want kids to really dig in, give it two. Ten minutes of a chapter is reading; the rest is hands on a lab.

One device is enough. Put the screen up at the front and call kids over to turn the dials. Watching the screen change as the numbers change is the lab, so a one-device room loses very little.

You can use a single lab on its own. Add the lab's name to the end of the chapter address — #lab-P2 — and it jumps straight there.

The old tales are used as written. The lab in 4.2 counts up out-of-copyright fairy tales exactly as they were written, so an old tale's turn of phrase can surface as it builds. We filter those out of the opening sentence.

Some labs are built to split the room. P8, H10, P21 and P22 give different kids different answers on purpose. They aren't for getting it right; they're for arguing about why you disagreed.

It runs on a school network. Every lab computes on the device itself. Anything it needs comes from this site and nothing else, and nothing goes anywhere else. A room with cameras and microphones locked down can still finish everything — see the table above.

You can collect what kids wrote. At the end of 6.4, Take it as a file saves the answers gathered in the collection box on that screen as one text file. What you see on screen is what the file contains. That's the only moment any of it comes out as a file, and a kid has to press it. The file is saved on that device too.

Stamps show how far they got. Each lab has two or three small goals, and a stamp appears at the top as each one lands. That's usually all you need to see while walking the room.

When you get stuck

• "I don't get it" — press Show me together

• The screen looks wrong — refresh. It picks up where you left off

• The lab won't open — update your browser. Internet Explorer won't work

When several kids share a device

Start over at the top of a lab resets that lab. To wipe everything a kid has written, use Clear my answers in chapter 6.4.

Try it with a grown-up

Most chapters have one Try it with a grown-up. Nothing to buy. Five minutes.

Your job here isn't to teach — it's to get it wrong alongside them. When a kid sees that the machine can't read your handwriting either, that's the whole point of this guide.

In a classroom, pair kids up instead. It doesn't have to be a grown-up — it has to be someone else getting it wrong too.