Ask Jeeves Kids - Ask Jeeves Kids is a kid-friendly way for children to find answers to their questions online. Focussing on education in a fun way, at Ask Jeeves Kids kids can ask questions in a natural way, like, "How big were dinosaurs?" If Jeeves doesn't know the answer to that exact question, a list of similar questions will come up and the child can choose the most apppropriate one. Ask Jeeves combines the judgment of human editors with filtering technology to help kids find both relevant and appropriate answers on the Web.

Cybrary - This website has 7 subject areas, including art, reading, math, music, and science and 3 general areas. The science section has sub-sections in Earth Science, Space Science, Living Things, Math, Dinosaurs, and Invention. Click on the subject you are interested in and subtopics and sub-sub-topics will come up. It's quite well-organized and was designed by a librarian for kids in Grades 3-8.

4Kids - The best part of 4Kids is the directory for kids, called Cool Spots. This is something of a Merlot for children. Users can suggest "Cool Spots" which are educational websites (wide variety of topics) designed especially for children. A team of editors check out the suggested sites as well as searching for new great sites on their own. Each Cool Site has a graphic and description, the url and a rating of up to 5 stars. Anyone can rate the sites as often as they want to (I tried) so the rating system is not as strict as it should be. However, I found a number of cool spots which I will be visiting again with my son.

Also to be found on 4Kids is a weekly Kid Quest which is a WebQuest for kids. Other features include a Speak Out section where kids can write their opinion on a topic that changes weekly, and a Fun Stuff link, an Ask Amy section where kids can ask questions about tech and the Web and a Safe Surfing link to help kids learn how to safely surf the Net.

This is a great website with links to hundreds of sites. I like the fact that all sites have been reviewed, and I also like the authors' stated mission "to pursue more effective ways of creating learning environments for all children regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or disability, particularly through advancing technologies such as the Internet." They also produce a weekly newspaper article which appears in 70 newspapers in the USA and around the world (actually only 2 international but one is in Tokyo! :).

Wildlife Search - This site lists 76 animals from Alligator to Zebra. Click on the animal you are interested in and you will be taken to a list of sites related specifically to that animal. Some of the sites listed have language that is rather advanced for the K-6 group but the pictures are spectacular.

This website was created by Jennifer Claro as a requirement for the graduate course Internet Resources and Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Last updated August 13, 2004.