Visiting A Petting Farm takes students on a virtual exploration. They can go to see all the animals on the farm in whatever order they wish. They also have a chance to feed and pet the animals, and when they do, they hear the sound the animal makes. When they decide to leave, students hear all the animals sound off together to bid them goodbye. Bonus: Puzzles and Photo collection!

For beautiful nature photos, take a look at a website by John P. Sercel. John has set up an online gallery of images including mountains, water, wildlife, flowers, and more. And you can download them free! I’ve put a link to his page under the Free Stuff links you will find when you scroll down and look in the right-hand sidebar of this page.

I’ve found a web site that is a treasure trove of free online activities in areas across the entire curriculum. I was particularly excited about her mathematics activities. Besides math practice, she has pages that illustrate symmetry and various types of patterns. The link at the foot of this page leads to an index of Jo Edkins’ many separate educational pages.

Snow includes two anchor books, a sequencing activity, and a phonics activity using some of the “ow” words from the Snow story. There are also cloze activities in some formats. The Snow story uses photos and movies to illustrate a perpetual winter problem for those of us who live in cold areas: What can we do with all this snow? Making A Snowman answers that question! Bonus: All 7 photos used in Snow and 14 more, plus clip art!

Wrapping A Gift is an interactive make-it-yourself activity. Readers choose the wrapping paper and ribbons to wrap a virtual gift package. On the final page their gift design becomes part of a printable card. Bonus: Clip art collection and printable gift tags!

The Tides Pools activity set includes so much material that I have broken it into two separate study units. The first unit, Tide Pools, includes Exploring Tide Pools and two supporting books. Exploring Tide Pools is set up so that students can wander through in any order, finding exciting discoveries along the way. The second unit, Tide Pools Writing And Review, includes the tests and three writing activities. Bonus: Vocabulary Cards and a Photo Collection!

Just in time for Halloween, this fun activity lets students create digital jack-o’-lanterns. In all, nine different faces are possible. The artwork is very three dimensional and realistic. Once a jack-o’-lantern is finished, students add a lighted candle, and finally gets to see what their creation will look like on Halloween night. Bonuses: Zip files of both the art and creepy sounds!

This resource is a contribution from Karen Schweitzer, a freelance writer and copy editor who is the Business School Guide for About.com. 15 Slide Show Tools for Teachers is an article that links to a selection of useful (and free) sites that can be used to create, present, and publish slide shows. Bonus: Links to three more sites with free resources!

I’ve begun to create activities in HyperStudio 5® and find much to like about this new version of an old and beloved multimedia application. The biggest difference I saw right away is a modernized interface, making it much faster and easier to build activities. Bonus: Links to download players for both new and old version stacks!

This Classroom Suite® activity has a new frame animation, a spinning boomerang, to use in creating IntelliMation® in your activities. It also explains how to save the boomerang button into your User Library so that you can grab the boomerang from the Picture Library whenever you need it.