THE hall at Disraeli Combined School in High Wycombe was transformed into a colourful fairground for a week and five and six-year-old children from all over the district learned that sums can be fun.

In one corner nine-year-old Anton Dublin was weighing everyone, testing their strength, measuring their heart rates before and after exercise, and seeing how tall they were.

He then entered all the statistics onto a computer to draw up personal profiles of all his young customers. In another corner, children were queuing to catch a pretend bus, paying with pretend pennies to travel to the swimming pool or to school.

There was a garden centre selling plants, a fruit-and-veg shop, a castle to visit and a carpet shop where children could work out how many tiles they needed to cover the kitchen.

In the vet's corner nine-year-old Simone Douglas was working out how much medicine or bandages injured pets needed, while vet James Locket was taking appointments and saying this was what he wanted to be.

In another store Alex Crudace and Sophie Cory were selling plants and seeds.

In the middle was the Kids Cafe, brightly and lavishly stocked with everything children like to eat; chips and sausages, cakes and fishfingers.

None of it was actually edible but they bought platefuls.

For Wycombe MP Paul Goodman this was his first visit to a school in the constituency since being elected. He was tickled pink and very impressed.

He said: "It's incredible. All this energy and invention. And what strikes me is that it is all so colourful."

He added that he did not know children could be so energetic and so well behaved at the same time.

Disraeli School laid on the Maths Fair last week after a year's planning in collaboration with the county education authority's numeracy department.

It is the first time it has been tried and the idea is likely to be tried again in other centres in Buckinghamshire.

It was designed for the schools' smallest children who trooped round clutching their plastic cups with plastic coins from stall to stall. Visitors from ten schools came over the week, some more than once.

The stalls were designed to allow the children to work sums out in a fun environment based on reality.

School head Nigel Cook said Disraeli was trying to improve the numeracy skills of its own children, which was one reason why the school had been chosen.

He said: "My objective is to get them to realise that maths can be great fun."