Billy Bear's Alphabet Games
Billy Bear divides his alphabet games into four lessons. Lesson one is not really a lesson at all. Its only purpose is to load graphics into cache to speed up game play. Skip this and move right to lesson two, where your kindergartener can choose pictures that start with each letter. Notice how you don't have to click on the pictures? The answer is displayed as you move your mouse over them. The remaining games (for slightly older kids) involve finding letters on the keyboard.

Little Explorers
What a fun way to surf the Net! Each letter of Little Explorers' dictionary has dozens of illustrated entries, most of them linked to external sites. Explore Africa, acid rain, astronomy and more. As you roam onto the Net, the Little Explorers' alphabet frame remains at the top of your screen, so you can return at any time. The dictionary is also available in English/Spanish, English/French and Japanese.

Africam
"Africam welcomes you to the world's first virtual game reserve." This amazing site is a treasure trove of thirteen cams located in five South African national parks and game reserves. Choose from cams at watering holes, wild dog cams, elephant cams, even mobile cams operated by park rangers. Have you ever dreamed of going on a photo safari? Snap a picture of any of the cams (use the right-hand button on your mouse and choose Save Image As) and email it to Africam for possible selection as Picture of the Day. The competition is tough, however, as they often receive 500 images a day. (GMT+2)

Animal Planet
Although not devoted exclusively to animal cams, Animal Planet (from Discovery Online) has enough cams to be included in today's list. You'll find four cams listed in a row near the top of the page — they range from an adoptable puppy in the Miami Animal Shelter to sharks swimming in the Waikiki Aquarium. Don't miss the twin baby gorillas from the Oklahoma Children's Zoo (look for the link in the top right corner). Since the cams are geographically diverse, each has its own optimal viewing time. (HT, PT, CT, ET)

Wild Birds Unlimited Bird Feeder Cam
Here is an opportunity to bird watch at a feeder that is never empty and always seems to have happy customers. (ET)

Aquariums

Oregon Coast Aquarium
"Ribbit, ribbit. Got flies?" After perusing the great frog photos at FROGS! Clues to Survival, hop on over to the interactive who-done-it: The Case of the Disappearing Frogs. "She walked into my office late one day and brought trouble with her. The first things I noticed were her legs. They were long. Come to think of it they were green, too, with funny little webbed feet." But wait, there's more. Oregon Coast is home to Keiko "Free Willy" the killer whale (complete with Keiko Cam) and also offers an outstanding virtual tour.

Arts & Crafts

Arts and Crafts
Remember the play dough recipe the preschool teacher gave you? When you've got to have it, but can no longer find it, just log in to Arts and Crafts. Here you'll find simple recipes for play dough, silly putty, salt clay and finger paint. For more recipes (sidewalk chalk and 3 recipes classified as Gooey Stuff) visit Fun Crafts for Kids.

Bubbles

Exploratorium Soap Bubbles
What is so fascinating about bubbles? The precise spherical shape, the incredibly fragile nature of the soap film, the beautiful colors that swirl and shimmer? Or is it a combination of all these phenomena? Covering all aspects of the physics of bubbles, this site explains all. What do beehives have in common with bubble foam? Go to "Bubble Meets Bubble" to find out.

Professor Bubbles' Bubblesphere
He's traveled the world, entertaining audiences with his bubbles, and now Professor Bubbles shares his secrets. Be sure to read the Bubble FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). Did you know you can tell a bubble is about to pop when it becomes colorless?

Checkers

The Circus
Although circus-like performances have existed in many cultures for thousands of years, the history of the modern circus began in London in 1770 when Philip Ashley used a circular performance ring for exhibiting trick riding and horsemanship as a promotion for his horseback riding school. With the advent of a circular stage, the horses could be seen from all angles, and would never gallop out of sight. Even the size of his stage, forty-two feet in diameter, is now a circus standard.

Big Apple Circus
Founded twenty years ago by two jugglers, The Big Apple Circus is a non-profit one-ring big-top tent circus.Not to be missed sections include the downloadable Study Guide in Adobe Acrobat format ("a resource for students and teachers"), a history of the circus (titled Classical Circus in the left-hand menu,) and two 360-degree Virtual Tours (one of the big-top tent, the other of the stables.) And last, but not least, take a look at the animated tent raising.

Cirque du Soleil
Since their beginnings in the late eighties as a street festival in Quebec, Circque du Soleil has performed for more than thirty million people. Currently, their 575 performers are staging seven shows on four continents. Their animal-less performances are a tantalizing mixture of dance, acrobatics, and music. Best bets at their site (besides details on when and where they perform) are the video previews of their seven shows which you'll find under In the Ring.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey
" Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, the online edition of The Greatest Show on Earth!" Following the left-hand menu, you can start your tour with Fun and Games, where you'll find Shockwave arcade games such as Create a Clown and Morph a Clown, circus-themed e-postcards, and a Ringmaster's Quiz. Other sections worth clicking are The Magnificent Menagerie (all about the circus animals and their care,) History & Tradition (a history of the RBBB circus), and an excellent section titled Circus Works.

Dinosaurs
Although they certainly never went out of fashion, dinosaurs are enjoying a resurgence in popularity because of the recent release of Disney's animated Dinosaur movie. If all the related dinosaur hoopla is spurring a dino interest in your household, here are some educational sites to explore together.

Bonus: Dig These Dinosaurs
These twelve fun dino activities from Bonus.com are categorized into three age groups. The easiest activities are coded with a beach ball for ages three to six. Those for seven to elevens are marked with stars. And the most advanced (for ages twelve to fifteen) are labeled with an owl icon. Three favorite clicks are the Dinosaur Imposters ("It is your job to interrogate them and weed out the ‘imposter-saurs.'"), Dino Science ("Test your knowledge of dinosaur anatomy by matching the skeletons with their skulls.") and Dino Puzzle ("Put together a dinosaur skeleton and make it come alive!")

Sue at the Field Museum
Who is Sue? "Sue is the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex. She was discovered by fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson in 1990, in the badlands of South Dakota." Following a long custody battle, Sue was sold at Sotheby's auction house October 4, 1997. The Field Museum purchased Sue for nearly $8.4 million – the most money ever paid for a fossil. On May 17 of this year, the museum revealed Sue. She stands thirteen feet high at her hips and is forty-two feet long from head to tail.

Walking with Dinosaurs
There are so many ways to explore this BBC site it's hard to decide where to begin. Click on Today's Choice to view the Flash episode of the day. And, since fun is such an important part of learning, don't miss the Games and Quizzes -- which is where you will find the dinosaur Web cam (the only one of its kind on the WHOLE Internet.) For a unique collection of dino jokes ("Why did the Apatosaurus devour the factory? Because she was a plant eater") click on Dig Deeper, then You Sent Us.

Wanted: Albertosaurus
"Last seen alive 68 million years ago in an area now called Alberta in Canada. Has powerful jaws and sharp teeth, but poses no immediate danger. Evidence of an Albertosaurus mass burial found about 90 years ago, but exact site not known. Information leading to its whereabouts requested by dino detective Phillip Currie." Learn how real-life palaeontologist Currie tracked down the missing burial site. Curie and his team have, so far, unearthed the remains of twelve Albertosaurs, evidence that these carnivores probably lived in packs.

Easy Online Games
What do kids do with computers? Play, of course. And to encourage them, here is a collection of online games for pre-readers. A few of these games require Shockwave, others require a Java-capable browser.

Billy Bear's Online Games
Billy Bear has a large collection of games for preschoolers and early elementary grades created with Java and JavaScript. This means you don't need to download any plug-ins, but you do need a newish browser (at least Netscape 3.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0). Be sure to have both Java and JavaScript enabled in your Netscape preferences or Internet Explorer options.

Hop Pop Town
These three ingenious neighborhoods are filled with musical sounds available for the clicking. Similar to the popular Living Books series (which taught our children to click on everything), each clicked object animates and plays a sound. Sequences of sounds can be recorded and played back. For older kids (or parents who take dictation), they also have writing pages based on material from the musical games.

JumpStart Kids Game Center
Based on characters from their line of educational CD-ROMS, this chock-full-of-fun Java game center has activities for toddlers, preschoolers and elementary students. For preschoolers, try the Slider Puzzles (very easy) and the Sticker Book. Connect the Dots is a variation on the familiar theme, because it incorporates addition and subtraction and has challenging puzzles for kids up to fourth grade.

Scrambler
This Scrambler game is fun for the whole family because you are timed as you play at one of three levels of difficulty. Easy divides the picture into nine tiles, medium into twelve, and hard into sixteen tiles.

Inside a Chocolate Factory
The fascination with chocolate factories is aptly captured by Roald Dahl's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie is the proud winner of a golden ticket, his entree to the event of a lifetime: a behind-the-scenes tour of Willie Wonka's chocolate factory. Here are some virtual chocolate factory tours. No tickets, golden or otherwise, required.

Hershey's Chocolate Tour
Hershey's plant in Pennsylvania, with nearly two million square feet of manufacturing space, is the largest chocolate factory in the world. Since opening in 1905, it's hosted millions of visitors. The public tour, however, was discontinued in 1973. But today, without even leaving home, you can take the tour that made Hershey, PA "one of America's favorite destinations." First I learned that cocoa beans, the primary ingredient of chocolate, grow only within twenty degrees of the equator. Continuing with sugar, almonds, peanuts and milk, you'll learn about each ingredient and each part of the manufacturing process.

M&M Factory Tour
"Actually, the story of M&M's began thousands of years ago - the Mayan and Aztec civilizations of Central America used to make a drink from the beans of the cacao tree. Spanish colonists brought the drink back to Europe in 1528, but it wasn't until over 300 years later that a method was found to produce solid chocolate." After a quick animated tour of the M&M factory and a tongue-in-cheek monorail tour of the M&M studio, this Web site is all Shockwave fun and games.

Wonka Factory
This animated playground created by Nestlé, was inspired by Dahl's Willie Wonka character. In the science lab, you'll learn about the melting points of solids such as chocolate, butter, sugar and ice. Or balance the acid and alkali levels in the sweet and sour candies. In the Inventonator, you can arrange musical machine parts to create a melody. All the games require Shockwave, and are designed for the under-ten set. Though obviously designed to sell their candies, the result is fun and educational.

Interactive Coloring
Many of the coloring pages found on the Net are the print-and-play variety. Print out the black and white picture and use your crayons to color them in. Today's sites, however, are virtual coloring books — you color, paint and draw right on your computer screen. These interactive coloring pages are great for preschoolers, kindergartners and budding artists of all ages.

Coloring.com
This site hits the mark with a large selection of pictures and the ability to email your completed masterpieces to friends and family with a small personal note. Coloring.com loses a star, however, for only letting you color within the lines -- no free form coloring is possible. Pictures are grouped into topics such as cars (the largest topic), animals, birthdays and holidays. What a fun way to send electronic art across the Net!

Kaleidoscope Painter
Now for something totally different: Kaleidoscope Painter creates colorful spiraling fractal designs based on the movement of your mouse. You can change the effects by moving your mouse or resizing the brush. You can even put it on Auto and watch as the mesmerizing lacy designs create themselves. Guaranteed to capture your imagination.

Laugh-Out-Loud Poems
Do  kids think poetry is stuffy and boring? Selected re these five poetry collections for their laugh-ability. These funny poems are best when shared aloud, so go grab your loved ones – and read them a funny poem.

Giggle Poetry
Bruce Lansky's books are among America's best-selling children's poetry books, with more than 500,000 copies in print. His site not only includes a large archive of funny poems (from Lansky and other Meadowbrook Press poets), it also has fill-in-the-blank poetry activities, advice for would-be poets, and poems to grade (which ones are good enough to be published?) Here's a familiar one with a twisted ending, written by Bill Dodd. "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, until you hit the waterfall – then you'll start to scream."

Poetry for Kids
Kenn Nesbitt is an young poet who writes zany poems with hysterically funny punch lines. Try reading them aloud to your kids, or better yet, have your children read them to their friends and classmates. Here's a snippet from "The Amusement Park." " We went to an amusement park, my family and I. We rode on rides so scary I expected I would die. We rode a rollercoaster called The Homicidal Comet. It had so many loop-de-loops it nearly made us vomit."

Seussville University
"Welcome to Seussville University, where you can have ‘lots of good fun that is funny' while learning basic reading, math, science, and reasoning skills." From the Cat's Concentration game to Green Eggs and Ham picture scramble, Dr. Seuss fans will find plenty to crow about. Don't-miss-it pick is the Shockwave "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!" game (listed under Reasoning.) It is based on the book written by Jack Prelutsky, inspired by work Dr. Seuss left incomplete at the time of his death in 1991.

Learning to Count
Here are 1-2-3-4-5 recommendations for your littlest point-and- clickers, just learning to count. But wait, there's more.

Humphrey's Counting House
Only one of Humphrey's Shockwave games actually involves counting, but Humphrey the singing, dancing bear is amusing enough to earn his place here anyway. Click on the cards for a well-implemented game of concentration, matching the numbers one through six to their appropriate pictures. Other treats are a coloring book which is better than most I've seen, and a fun music game (can you repeat a pattern of xylophone notes?) And don't miss Humphrey's opening dance number, just click on his smiling head.

Kid's Carnival Numbers
The starting page warns that these Java games take a while to download, and even at cable speed, they are right. So grab a snack and relax. You'll be rewarded with five different number games and six Connect-a-Dots. How Many? and Counting Fun are the easiest of the number games. The other three get into higher mathematical concepts such as addition and subtraction. Connect-a-Dot is a perennial counting favorite, but be forewarned the red-on-blue numbers are difficult to read.

Paper Crafts
More than 2,000 years ago, the Chinese were the first to use fiber from hemp and the inner bark of the mulberry tree to make paper. Today paper is of our most important industrial products. Paper, it seems, is everywhere. That's why paper craft projects are always a popular choice for home or school.

Best Paper Airplane
During the summer of 1950, eight-year-old Michael O'Reilly watched in amazement as his sister's boyfriend made the best paper airplane in the whole world. "When he started folding the paper, I knew this was something different, something special. He never explained how he did it but every move, every fold, every detail was burned into my memory." Today, Michael shares the secrets of the DC-3 paper airplane: how to build it and how to fly it.

MakingFriends.com: Preschool Paper Crafts
For younger hands, MakingFriends.com gives us fourteen "economical, age-appropriate paper projects for two to five year olds." All projects include detailed instructions, and many include printable templates for cutting or coloring. But don't stop at the preschool paper projects. MakingFriends.com is chock full of pages and pages of craft ideas for kids of all ages.

Paper Airplane Hangar
"The most important thing when making a plane is not making the folds in exactly the right place, although this is important. More important is making each fold well." The Paper Airplane Hangar is filled with good advice on how to fix common flying problems such as veering left, right, or flying into the ground. It also includes safety rules, things your mother always told you like "Never throw planes at people." Since most of the danger lies in the point of the plane, Ben Yeomans recommends the sharp nose be either cut or folded down for kids.

Paper University
Created by the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI), Paper University includes not just paper craft projects but also interesting science activities ("How Does a Paper Towel Absorb Water?") and an introduction to the ecology of paper manufacturing ("Are We Running out of Trees?" and "How is Paper Recycled?") Click on Art Class for five craft projects including a recipe for paper mâché, pulp ornaments and jewelry made with candy molds, and a stuffed paper bag fish.

Pieces ‘n Creases: A Fun Guide to Origami
"Origami (pronounced or-i-GA-me) is the Japanese art of paperfolding. ‘Ori' is the Japanese word for folding and ‘kam' is the Japanese word for paper. That is how origami got its name. However, origami did not start in Japan. It began in China in the first or second century and then spread to Japan sometime during the sixth century." Pieces ‘n Creases won Best of Contest in the 1999 ThinkQuest Jr. Internet Challenge, and it's easy to see why. Enjoy the activities, the history, and the poems. "After you've visited our Web site, you won't be able to pass up a square piece of paper without a little folding."

Phonics
World Book Dictionary defines "phonics" as "a method of teaching reading by association of letters and combinations of letters with their appropriate speech sounds." Rather than enter into the debate about whether children should be taught to read using phonics or whole language, here are five great sites to help children learn the sounds of our language.

BBC Education: Words and Pictures
Yes, they do have British accents and call their mothers "Mum" instead of "Mom," but this BBC site does a fabulous job of integrating audio and animation into a really fun learning experience. Try Jim's Crankophone for practice in distinguishing vowel sounds in Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words. Use the teacher's panel to control which vowels are tested.

Phonemic Awareness
Julie Vickery, a teacher of English as both a second and first language, has created a page of ten in-real-life activities to help reinforce the learning of phonics. Activities include Clapping Alphabet Chants ("A says /a/ like apple. A says /a/ /a/ /a/."), Alphabet I Spy ("I spy something that begins with the letter B.") and Letters in the Sand ("Fill disposable aluminum pie pans with approximately one-half inch of sand or salt. Call a letter or word. Students write the letter or beginning letter in their pans.")

Saxon Publishers Phonics Activities
"In this activity children are asked to match one of three pictures with a given word." Saxon Publishers has produced two interactive activities (Picture-Word Match and Word-Picture Match) that tie-in with their phonics textbooks, but are useful whether you use their books or not. Start by selecting a grade level (K, 1 or 2), a lesson number (from 22 to 140) and the number of problems you want to complete (from five to twenty.)

Sing Along
Turn your home computer into a karaoke machine with these fun, sing along sites. All you need is an Internet connection and your multimedia computer. And although you can sing without it, a microphone connected to your sound card completes the transformation.

NIEHS Sing Along Music and MIDIs
"Music! It's really good for you. Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences study the impact of our environment on our health. Even sounds in our environment can have an effect, so scientists have studied the effects of music on our physical and mental functions for many years. For example, it has been determined that music in our environment plays an important role in stress reduction!" Hmmm, and that is supposed to explain why the NIEHS spends our money on a sing along site? Politics aside, the site has a nice collection that includes patriotic songs not found elsewhere.

PBS Kids Karaoke
"It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood. A beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?" But that's not all. In addition to Mister Roger's Neighborhood, there's everyone's favorite purple dinosaur Barney, and songs from Arthur and Theodore Tugboat. These PBS songs are the original recordings, not Karaoke melodies. And although some of them (such as Mister Roger's) include printed lyrics, most do not. Requires Shockwave and RealPlayer.

Space
Outer space holds a fascination for kids of all ages, and today's site picks include material for early elementary ages, as well as high schoolers (and beyond.) Before we start, here's bonus tip: NASA hosts a multitude of online chats with astronauts, astronomers and space engineers. For the monthly calendar, click on over to NASA's Schedule of Live Web Events.

NASA Kids
With news about current space events and links to age-appropriate reference material (some of it at external sites), NASA Kids brings us space in a tidy package. Reference topics are divided into Space & Beyond, Rockets & Airplanes and Pioneers & Astronauts. Activities are listed under Projects & Games.

Space Kids
Landing at SpaceKids.com is like being sent to play in outer space! Filled with feature stories, questions and answers, contests and interactive games for the elementary-age crowd, Space Kids is the younger sibling of Space.com. Middle-schoolers (and older) should visit Space.com (look for the link on the left-hand menu) for in-depth space news and science. "Our primary mission is the popularization of space. Our commitment is to a greater public understanding and enthusiasm about space and space-related subjects."

Space Place
Space Place is the place for hands-on elementary-age space crafts ("Make your own jewel in the sky — a model Saturn decoration"), space activities ("Play our Intergalactic Adventures board game and be the first to explore a black hole and live to tell about it!") and space experiments ("Test a new spacecraft material.") You'll also find a smattering of fun space facts, but not exhaustive reference material.

Zoos
Offered here are the best zoos on the Net. The objective, as always, was to find sites offering a quality educational experience, not just brochure sites listing hours and admission prices. Here's what was found. Hope you enjoy the lions and tigers and bears!

Lincoln Park Zoo
If you have homework to do, a column to write, or any other important business to get to, do not even think about looking at the live Tiger Cam. Once you see the tigers, start playing with the zoom, and realize you can move the camera around by clicking anywhere on the image, you'll be hooked. After you pry yourself away from the tigers, you can visit the rest of the animals by taking the virtual tour, or by clicking on the Mammals, Birds or Reptiles/Amphibians headings.

National Zoo
The National Zoo in Washington, D.C. hosts the best online audio tour. It is the same audio wand tour you could rent if you were visiting the zoo, but on the Web it's free! Other highlights include the Animal Photo Library (guaranteed to make you smile), and the National Zoo Cinema.

San Diego Zoo & Wild Animal Park
Join D.L. Armstrong on a research trek into the Wild Animal Park's newest exhibit, Heart of Africa. Each day of the two-week journey includes "a glimpse of what I discovered that day — perhaps a page from my journal, an animal photograph, or a video clip." Other interesting reports (such as the first condor birth of 1998) can be found in the What's New section. While you're cyber-vacationing at the zoo, don't forget your friends and family back home. Send them a digital conservation postcard!