I’ve found a web site that is a treasure trove of free online activities in areas across the entire curriculum. Actually, the link you see at the foot of this page leads to an index of Jo Edkins’ many separate educational pages. The link will also appear in the Fun To Do permanent list in the right sidebar of this site.

Jo explains:

Some of my webpages were in their original form written for my son’s primary school, so they have been tried out on real children.

Not all the pages are for children. None are directly unsuitable for children, except the information is dense and writing small and I just wouldn’t think that children would ‘get’ it!

Children continually surprise me, and some of even these pages might spark off ideas in teachers and parents. I’ve tended to write websites on whatever interests me and I seem to have rather eccentric interests.

The word I would use for Jo’s interests is wide-ranging. She has pages on geography, history, art, science, and mathematics, to name a few.

Frequently she covers an area by posting an information page plus several related online activities. The example here is the beginning of a map game. When the game starts, the names disappear and students must match the country names to the map colors. The geography section included games like this one for continents and rivers and oceans of the world.

I was particularly excited about her mathematics activities. Besides math practice, she has pages that illustrate symmetry and various types of patterns. By clicking here and there in a grid, you can make all kinds of patterns, mazes, and mosaics onscreen. The example here is a pattern created using horizontal reflection.

The patterns and tessellations section is one of my favorites! Beside the many activities, there are a set of tessellated grids you can download or print for coloring designs off-computer.

These could be loaded into any of the multimedia applications we use, and Jo says “If you wish to use anything from my site directly, please do. There are various pages that make patterns, etc and I don’t mind if they spark any ideas in you.”

Jo has simple instructions for how to save and print each activity result. She also has written sections for teachers explaining the activities and providing ideas for how to use the pages.

If you find something you can use from her sites, email Jo and let her know. She deserves all kinds of applause for generously sharing her programming talent!

Link to Online Activities

Click here to go to the index page for all Jo’s sites.