eduActiv8 (formerly pySioGame) is a collection of simple interactive educational activities designed with kids in mind. Initially the project started as a personal one that over the years turned into a cross-platform Open Source educational program for children that is used by thousands around the world.
If you think your kids could benefit from this program you will find over 100 short educational activities including sets of flashcards presenting new knowledge, "simulation" activities where kids can tweak numbers to see how things change to better understand certain concepts, as well as the good old drill activities in a form of interactive worksheets to allow the practice of newly attained skills by moving virtual objects around the screen - learning through play.
eduActiv8 is suitable for children in the first few years of primary school but can be easily used by pre-school kids with some guidance from parents.
Currently, the activities within the program mainly focus on basic concepts of maths (learning numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions, patterns, symmetry, time and much more) but also there are some language exercises (alphabet and some word activities) and general logic games and memory training exercises, puzzles, colour games, etc.
The program runs on Windows™, MacOS™, and Linux. Sadly the attempt to build eduActiv8 for Android has been dropped due to a number of technical and performance issues. The project is free for anyone to use and is licenced under GPLv3.
What's inside eduActiv8?
- Language activities:
- learn the alphabet in a selected language
- learn to write printed and cursive letters (not all available languages are supported, but anyway this is still best done on paper)
- Touch Typing Tutor - learn positions of letters/keys on keyboard (UK, US, German, Greek, French, Polish and Russian keyboard layouts supported so far and only on desktop computers)
- learn new words in multiple categories - a variation of spelling, matching and listening activities
- Maths activities:
- learn numbers 1 - 20
- learn number spellings 0 - 100
- learn to count by dragging objects
- learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide
- columnar addition and subtraction, long multiplication and division
- compare and sort numbers
- basic fractions, decimals, percentages and ratios
- learn basic shapes and solids
- learn to draw shapes
- draw symmetric shapes and find lines of symmetry
- learn to complete patterns
- Time activities:
- play with clock hands and learn how to tell time
- learn to set the clock by dragging the clock hands
- match digital time to analogue time
- learn to find difference between two times
- learn to find time so long after or before a given time
- Art and Colour activities:
- basic painting activity
- learn colour names
- learn how colours are formed both by light (RGB) and ink (CMY)
- Memory activities:
- memorizing a sequence of highlighted squares
- memorizing a set of directions
- memorizing locations of matching images
- Other activities:
- matching shapes
- tracing lines
- finding the matching images
- multiple variations of the "Fifteen" game
The availability of activities may depend on the choice of language, age/difficulty, availability of support software (i.e. eSpeak) as well as other technical parameters such as screen resolution and the platform the software is running on.
